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The family and denominational factors influencing intergenerational religious transmission have been examined in a substantial body of work. Despite research identifying religious ideology as a salient aspect of American religion, however, its role in religious transmission remains unexplored. In this study, I use the National Study of Youth and Religion to test whether children’s worship attendance and centrality of faith in young adulthood differ based on whether their parents identify as religiously liberal, moderate, conservative, or none of these. I further test whether the strength of the relationship between parent and child religiosity differs between ideological groups. The primary finding is that religious transmission is stronger among children of religious conservatives than for any other group, while the other groups do not differ significantly from one another. These differences in transmission are largely explained by religious conservative parenting approaches, congregational involvement, and most importantly, more intensive religious socialization.
Research has consistently found that the link between religious and political identification and behavior in the United States has grown significantly, as religious populations have increasingly aligned with the political right while secular Americans move toward the political left. Yet, other research cautions that most Americans are not extreme either politically or religiously. In this study I seek to integrate these claims by applying a latent class analysis to religious and political indicators from the 2016 American National Election Study. Results show six distinct profiles of religiopolitical orientation. Two of these profiles partially correspond to a religious conservative versus secular liberal binary but differ in key characteristics such as size and style of political engagement, exhibiting a dynamic of what I describe as asymmetric polarization. The remainder of the population exhibits religiopolitical orientations that fit with neither extreme. Instead, they fall into one of four internally coherent groups: (1) Religious but apolitical, (2) religious and political but ideologically diverse, (3) nonreligious and apolitical, and (4) nominally religious but behaviorally disengaged from both domains. Rather than polarization or moderation and incoherence, the relationship between religion and politics in the United States may be usefully described in terms of structured heterogeneity.
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In the years surrounding Donald Trump’s presidency, a burgeoning strand of literature has emphasized the role of Christian nationalism in American political conflict. The authors argue that this literature contains mutually reinforcing theoretical and empirical shortcomings. Theoretically, the concept of Christian nationalism is overextended and conflates multiple conceptualizations of religion in public life. Empirically, the standard scale used to measure Christian nationalism contains survey items that are too ambiguous to adequately inform (or constrain) interpretations of findings. The authors draw from cultural sociology and political science to highlight key questions current Christian nationalism scholarship does not adequately address. The authors present results from a latent class analysis to show how the same survey items allow other interpretations of how Americans think about religion, state, and public life. The authors conclude with a discussion of theoretical and empirical steps that may strengthen the contributions of this scholarship.
Socius (2022)
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Premarital sex predicts divorce, but we do not know why. Scholars have attributed the relationship to factors such as differences in beliefs and values, but these explanations have not been tested. It is further unclear how this relationship changes by number of sexual partners, or differs by gender. We re-examine this relationship with event history models using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Models include measures of adolescent beliefs and values, religious background, and personal characteristics, as well as approximate number of premarital sexual partners in young adulthood. We find the relationship between premarital sex and divorce is highly significant and robust even when accounting for early-life factors. Compared to people with no premarital partners other than eventual spouses, those with nine or more partners exhibit the highest divorce risk, followed by those with one to eight partners. There is no evidence of gender differences.
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Recent scholarship has conceptualized morality in terms of multidimensional, intuitive traits that influence what people regard as right or wrong. Ample literature shows that religious factors are closely related to moral traits. However, little research has explored links between religious upbringing and adult moral outcomes. This study uses longitudinal data from the National Study of Youth and Religion to examine how diverse forms of religious socialization in adolescence are related to two well-validated social-scientific conceptions of morality in young adulthood: Haidt's moral foundations and Schwartz’ values typology. Using regression analyses and Lindeman, Merenda, and Gold (LMG) decomposition methods, I show that different aspects of religious upbringing are linked to the development of both moral foundations and values. Religious factors play a stronger role than either sociodemographics or parent political ideology in predicting young adult moral characteristics. Results highlight the centrality of religious upbringing to the state and trajectory of the population-level moral structure.
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Family and Religion in Flux: Relationship Complexity, Type of Religiosity, and Race/Ethnicity
This study examines the links between family formation, relationship history, and multiple types of religiosity in early-middle adulthood, as well as racial/ethnic heterogeneity of these associations. Family and religion have long been recognized as linked institutions. However, rapid changes in both institutions in recent decades necessitate a reexamination of this link. We know little about how this association varies by past vs. present relationship experience, institutional vs. private types of religiosity, or racial/ethnic group. Logistic regression models predicting religious attendance, importance of faith, and prayer frequency were estimated using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Models included measures of both contemporaneous union and parenthood status and past relationship experiences. Additional analyses tested these associations separately for White, Black, and Hispanic respondents. Parenthood is consistently linked to higher, and cohabitation lower, religiosity. Respondents with more sexual partners tend to be less religious, while those with past marriages/divorces are more religious. Associations are stronger for attendance than faith or prayer, and more pronounced among White than Black or Hispanic respondents. The link between religion and family remains in evidence, but may have become more tenuous due to the delay and complexification of family formation. This link is strongest for White Americans and with respect to institutional rather than private religiosity.