I’m honestly not sure that the social conservatism we associate with religion has all that much to do, in the average case, with religion per se. Fundamentalism is kind of a special case, but most of the time what we see is religious opinion reflecting whatever the standard conservative-leaning package of social beliefs is at that particular place and time. Change the standard and religious opinion follows, perhaps after some lag time—it’s just that religiosity is correlated with a bundle of factors that tend to imply conservatism, and that church events give you a ready-made venue for talking to other conservatives.
For that matter, most of the analysis of fundamentalism I’ve read treats it as a reaction against secular influences, not an endogenous religious phenomenon. Its phenomenology in the wild seems to be consistent with that—fundamentalist strains first tend to pop up a decade or two after a culture’s exposure to Enlightenment values.
it’s just that religiosity is correlated with a bundle of factors that tend to imply conservatism, and that church events give you a ready-made venue for talking to other conservatives.
That is probably an important contributor to the phenomenon; there is a certain “social conservative” mindset. However, I think that religion leads to some social norms, such as the idea that it’s acceptable to pick one’s morality out of old books, which provide fuel to socially conservative movements and attitudes.
I’m honestly not sure that the social conservatism we associate with religion has all that much to do, in the average case, with religion per se. Fundamentalism is kind of a special case, but most of the time what we see is religious opinion reflecting whatever the standard conservative-leaning package of social beliefs is at that particular place and time. Change the standard and religious opinion follows, perhaps after some lag time—it’s just that religiosity is correlated with a bundle of factors that tend to imply conservatism, and that church events give you a ready-made venue for talking to other conservatives.
For that matter, most of the analysis of fundamentalism I’ve read treats it as a reaction against secular influences, not an endogenous religious phenomenon. Its phenomenology in the wild seems to be consistent with that—fundamentalist strains first tend to pop up a decade or two after a culture’s exposure to Enlightenment values.
That is probably an important contributor to the phenomenon; there is a certain “social conservative” mindset. However, I think that religion leads to some social norms, such as the idea that it’s acceptable to pick one’s morality out of old books, which provide fuel to socially conservative movements and attitudes.