Religious Residue Stops at Oil Spills: Religious Socialization Has Limited Effects on Adult Environmental Attitudes

• In Event: 30610 - Environmental Values, Knowledge, and Politics

Abstract

From where do environmental values arise? It is well-established that religion is one source, with both beliefs about the world’s workings and religious congregational networks having well-studied effects. However, it is less understood whether these are from contemporary religious affiliation or from religious upbringing. The latter would suggest that values are long-lasting ideals and worldviews, while the former posits positions taken on issues of the day. In this paper, I investigate the potential effects of religious socialization on environmental attitudes via comparing those who were raised religious but later disaffiliated (the “Leavers”) to those who stayed religious (the “Stayers”). On one end of the spectrum, religious residue would suggest that people who disaffiliate would have attitudes close to those who remained religious. On the other hand, backlash among disaffiliates would suggest attitudes that go beyond the never religious. Using data from the 2010 and 2021 General Social Surveys, I find greater evidence of backlash among Leavers, showing the limits of the religious residue hypothesis in explaining political attitudes. Further, those “Joiners” who adopt a new religious identity in adulthood are distinct from those who similarly were not raised in the group but did not later join (the “Nevers”), supporting the proposed “zeal of the convert” explanation. Together, these results propose temporal and domain-specific limits to religious socialization and suggest that environmental attitude formation does not occur in childhood.

Author

• Frederic Traylor, Rutgers University-New Brunswick