SCOTT ATRAN
Anthropologist, University of Michigan; Author, In Gods We Trust

How Religion Creates Moral Society

"He who is not with Me is against Me;
and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad."

—Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew, xii, 30

"And the Lord said unto the servant,
Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in."

—Luke, xiv, 23:

Jonathan Haidt argues on the basis of some experimental evidence and anthropological observation that Republicans more than Democrats tap into universal moral passions to foster in-group solidarity over concerns for outgroups. Daniel Everett responds that some of these supposed universal passions, such as respect for authority and hierarchy, may not be universal because small-scale societies (especially foraging societies) tend to be egalitarian and non-hierarchical. Howard Gardner argues that rightwing authoritarian propaganda that champions collective over individual interests is hypocritical, and its leaders Machiavellian, because happiness is actually lower in rightwing societies and groups, including Protestant evangelicals and traditional (Reagan Catholics). Michael Shermer presents evidence that conservatives in U.S. society do report being happier than liberals, and do really believe in helping others, but through voluntary means of private charity rather than government enforced redistributions of wealth.

Haidt's and Shermer's arguments, I believe, are basically sound. Everett has a point, which requires some tweaking of Haidt's thesis: the moral issue of black versus white, us versus them, arises with large-scale cooperation and competition and is not a critical feature of small-scale societies. Gardner's arguments about hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance miss the key point that true believers in (divinely sanctioned) moral values are usually sincere, and that Enlightenment values cannot be successfully advanced (if Haidt is right) unless the moral passions that Haidt talks about are sincerely engaged by Democrats. Only some professional philosophers, jurists, scientists and academics believe that the principal point of political argument (or most any argument) is, or ought to be, truth rather than persuasion, and that an argument's principal appeal should be reason rather than passion. To paraphrase Karl Rove: reason may be fine for studying and analyzing history and politics, but not for living or making them.

Recent economic studies (most notably Unequal Democracy by Larry Bartels, a professor of political science at Princeton) show that when Democrats were in the White House, lower-income American families experienced slightly faster income growth than higher-income families, and that the reverse was true when Republicans were in control. If people vote rationally their economic interests, one would expect Democrats to be perennial favorites among working poor and middle class, and especially so in this year of economic downturn. Why then does polling show that the election is so close?

Conservative whites who vote Republican generally cite patriotism and national security as the most important issues in deciding who should be President. Over the last few generations, it is only when these voters perceive economy to be in dire straits, or when a previous Democratic administration has been successful in palpably increasing their prosperity, do patriotism and national security take on slightly less value than usual. Patriotism and national security are about binding and preserving what has become the primary reference group for political identity in the modern world, the nation.

In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin wrote that:

"The rudest savages feel the sentiment of glory… A man who was not impelled by any deep, instinctive feeling, to sacrifice his life for the good of others, yet was roused to such action by a sense of glory, would by his example excite the same wish for glory in other men, and would strengthen by his exercise the noble feeling of admiration."

The official website for John McCain's candidacy uses a quote from his book Faith of My Fathers as his banner:

"Glory is not a conceit. It is not a prize for being the most clever, the strongest, or the boldest. Glory belongs to the act of being constant to something greater than yourself, to a cause, to your principles, to the people on whom you rely, and who rely on you in return. No misfortune, no injury, no humiliation can destroy it."

When Jonathan Haidt says that morality is (pretty universally) not just about treating others fairly, but also "about living in a sanctified and noble way," he's right and that's why John McCain's appeal is powerful.

Among many Republican conservatives, there's one factor that is very strongly correlated with patriotism and national security, is of even more overriding concern in daily life, and stands inseparable from love of country. Religion. A Gallup poll found, for example, that nearly two thirds (65%) of highly religious American white voters would vote Republican, no matter what their interests in other issues are. When Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin says that the Iraq war is "a task that is from God," other conservatives may think she is wrong but they honor her sentiment as fundamentally noble and good.

If one looks at recent expression of religious devotion in the USA, as indicated by belief in the Bible and by church attendance, the classic division between the Blue states of the East and West versus the Red States of the South and Middle America is apparent: in the East and West,1 in 4 people believe that the Bible is fable; in the south and Midwest only 1 in 7 believe that.

Also apparent is the difference in education that goes with belief in the Bible (and religious devotion in the United States), where "education" may also be taken as a strong indicator of susceptibility to economic and other "issue-oriented" arguments.

What's Universal about Morality and What's not?

Primatologist Frans de Waal finds that even capuchin moneys have a sense of fairness: if an experimenter offers cucumbers to a pair of capuchin moneys, both eagerly grab the cucumbers; but if one of the monkeys is offered grapes, the other will throw the cucumber in the experimenter's face. This is a primitive version of the "Ultimatum Game" that all human cultures seem to subscribe to. Anthropologist Joe Henrich and his colleagues went to 17 small-scale societies with offers to split the equivalent of days wage between two anonymous players who had done no work for the money. The researchers found that there is always some lower bound that one of the players finds unacceptable, although this varies across cultures (the average cutoff may be close to 50-50 in one society but only 80-20 in another).

Studies by social psychologists Richard Nisbett and colleagues suggest that human cultures fall into two broad categories, individualist (mainly the U.S. and Western Europe) and collectivist (the rest of the world). Richard Shweder argues that for so-called collectivist societies there is also a strong "ethics of community" (authority/respect, duty/loyalty); often there is an "ethics of divinity" (purity/sanctity) as well. Here, too, there is evidence of universal cognitions.

Like other biological systems, moral intuition consists of an imperfect community of jerry-rigged faculties. Societies further combine these universal ingredients in creatively different ways. But in an internet experiment involving thousands of subjects, Haidt shows that even our own society all of these universal elements are not only present but their differential presence helps greatly to explain our current culture wars. Liberals tend to insist on individual rights and are uncomfortable with pronouncements and institutions built on the foundations of "the ethics of community" and the "ethics of divinity" because they often lead to patriotic jingoism (overblown loyalty), inequality (subordination of the weak or disadvantaged) and exclusion (racism, proscriptive nationalism and other forms of purification). Conservatives, however, want a richer, more interdependent social life, which require a regulation of relationships that goes beyond harm and fairness to individuals. This includes limits to sexual relations, management of obligations and authority, and the control of group boundaries and borders. Liberals see Conservatives as "repressive." Conservatives see liberals are "irresponsible."

The combination of moral intuitions into a moral culture is not a natural or logical determination, but an underdetermined product of historical contingency and willful choice. Belief in moral "rightness" or "truth" is matter of faith.

There is blind, closed, reactionary and dogmatic faith, like the Holy Inquisition's faith in the existence of witches and the power of torture to reveal the truth about The Devil. And there is open faith with reason and insight and the belief that cruel punishment demeans everybody's life. Such faith motivated a small band of American colonists to oppose the mightiest empire in the world. It was faith in the good sense and good will of men of reason—a faith supported by "firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence," which gave them the courage "to pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor."

The American revolutionaries mixed the evolutionary elements of morality in a different way. The "self-evident" aspects of "human nature" that The Creator supposedly endowed us with—including "inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"—are anything but inherently self-evident and natural in the life of our species: cannibalism, infanticide, slavery, racism and the subordination of women are vastly more prevalent over the course of history than "human rights." It was not inevitable or even reasonable that conceptions of freedom and equality should emerge, much less prevail. Nevertheless, the new ideal of individual liberty required upgrading the element of individuality, that is, our innate awareness of individuals as self-motivated agents who can act on their own to achieve goals. The focus of empathy shifted from people as parts of a group to individuals as such.

The Americans also downgraded elements of authority, loyalty and purity current in European politics. The French revolutionaries who followed lowered the emphasis on the individual and raised the importance of the group. That is why whole classes of counterrevolutionaries, rather than just individuals, could be brought to justice and collectively punished regardless of any individual actions or crimes they may have committed. Most modern revolutions and regimes follow more the French example than the American.

Alexis de Tocqueville stresses in Democracy in America, his masterful analysis of our young Republic, that religious conservatism in the United States does not mean sacrifice of individual interest for group interest, or subservience of the individual to the State or any other ruling collectivity. Rather, religion mitigates the selfishness of unbridled individualism and "private animosities," while shoring up free institutions that engage "aspiring hopes" as against "general despotism [which] gives rise to indifference."

"It must be acknowledged that equality, which brings great benefits to the world, nevertheless… tends to isolate them from each other, to concentrate every man's attention on himself; and it lay open the soul to an inordinate love of material gratification…. Religious nations are thus naturally strong on the very point on which democratic nations are weak, which shows of what importance it is for men to preserve their religion as their conditions become more equal….. Thus it is, that, by respecting all democratic tendencies not absolutely contrary to herself, and by making use of several of them for her own purposes, Religion sustains a successful struggle of that spirit of individual independence which is her most dangerous opponent…. As soon as several of the inhabitants of the United States have taken up an opinion or feeling which they wish to promote, they look out for mutual assistance; and as soon as they have found out each other they combine. From that moment they are not longer isolated men, but a power seen from afar, whose actions serve as an example, and whose language is listened to."

De Tocqueville surmised, correctly it seems, that religion in America would give its democracy greater endurance, cooperative power and competitive force than any strictly authoritarian regime or unbridled democracy.

Humans often use religion to cooperate to compete. (For example, it was only in the 1950s during height of the Cold War, that the Pledge of Allegiance was altered to include God). As Darwin noted, in competition between groups with similar levels of technology and population size, those groups will tend to win out that favor and transmit willingness to sacrifice some self interest for group interests (that also promote individual interests in the long run). Most cultures celebrate costly collective commitments as morally good and glorious. Many such celebrations are time-worn collective rituals with proven success in fostering cooperation within the group and making it more competitive with other groups. That basic dynamic is still with us and is unlikely to go away. Republicans intuitively get it; Democrats often don't. But Democrats do get more the meaning and message of the Enlightenment, which may allow in a wider world if only they can learn better from Republicans how to gather up the country first.