Secularization and State Spending

I have written before that there is a strong correlation between the growth of government — the expansion of government-provided services — and secularization. The power and scope of the government creates alternatives and opportunities which make it easier for people to escape the power and influence of churches.

Government welfare allows people to avoid relying on church hand-outs. Public schools allow people to avoid relying on church schools and church indoctrination. Civil marriage allows people to avoid having to marry in a church. Government social services of all sorts allow people to avoid being put under the thumb of priests and ministers in order to survive.

What this means is that Barack Obama's plans to expand the power and scope of government will probably cause a reduction in the scope and power of religious authority over people’s lives. I doubt that this is what he intends, but it's a very likely consequence which secularists should be cheering. When churches have more authority over the lives of citizens, there is less liberty for women, less liberty for racial minorities, less liberty for gays, and of course less liberty for atheists.

A recent study of 33 countries around the world by Anthony Gill and Erik Lundsgaarde, political scientists at the University of Washington, indicates that there is an inverse relationship between state welfare spending and religiosity. Specifically, they found that countries with larger welfare states had markedly lower levels of religious attendance, had higher rates of citizens indicating no religious affiliation whatsoever, and their people took less comfort in religion in general. In their words, “Countries with higher levels of per capita welfare have a proclivity for less religious participation and tend to have higher percentages of non-religious individuals.”

Gill and Lundsgaarde show, for instance, that Scandinavian societies such as Sweden and Denmark have some of the largest welfare states in the world as well as some of the lowest levels of religious attendance in the world. By contrast, countries with a history of limited government—from the United States to the Philippines—have markedly higher levels of religiosity. The link between religion and the welfare state remains robust even after Gill and Lundsgaarde control for socioeconomic factors such as urbanization, region, and literacy. The bottom line: as government grows, people’s reliance on God seems to diminish.

Source: Real Clear Politics

If expanded government services and authority ensures reduced religious authority, thus ensuring the growth of secularism in society, then conservative and libertarian atheists are faced with a difficult dilemma. On the one hand, they would prefer to see government authority reduced; on the other, they don't want to see the authority, power, and influence of churches to fill all the vacuum left behind. Given how strong churches and religious organizations already are, it's difficult to imagine, though, that completely secular alternatives would compete very well.

I don't think that it's a coincidence that religious authoritarians and theocrats are also staunch opponents of "big government." I think they recognize, at least on an unconscious level, that government-provided services is competition with church-provided services. I think they recognize that they will be able to exercise more power over others when people are forced to come to their churches for basic, necessary services. Is it any wonder that they have been so eager to become provider of government services through "faith-based funding"?

In an environment characterized by ordinary levels of social or economic insecurity, many of these individuals will turn to local congregations for social, economic, and emotional support. At times of high insecurity, such as the current recession, religious demand goes even higher. ...

By contrast, the more the state steps in to reduce the economic and social insecurity of its citizens, the less likely fair-weather believers are to darken the door of a church on Sunday. ...Americans will not have to trust in God, or their fellow congregants, to support an ailing parent, or to help them figure out how to pay for their daughter’s college tuition. Instead, they can put their faith in Uncle Sam.

What's sad is that this article is actually trying to argue that all of this is a bad thing — the author actually seems to think that it's bad for government to "reduce the economic and social insecurity of its citizens," but preventing churches from taking advantage of them when they come to find solace or help. The author doesn't seem to approve of the government giving citizens a reason to trust in their own efforts and collective success rather than in ephemeral, unknown gods.

But I guess that's not surprising because authoritarians get a lot of milage out of people voluntarily submitting to unaccountable, unelected authority figures. — whether human or supernatural The more they do so in their private lives, the easier it is to convince them that it's right to do so as well when it comes to public government as well. Authoritarian churches are the allies of authoritarian government, assuming they allow government to encroach on their territory at all.