Civic Language + Religion
A deep dive on the impact of religion on civic language.
Seventy-five percent of Americans report holding a specific religious affiliation; understanding the relationship between religious affiliation and civic engagement seems important for PACE and the broader field of civic engagement funders and organizations. Within the context of the United States, Christian affiliation broadly speaking — including Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and many different protestant expressions — impacts the way 70% of Americans interact in civic spaces. Even so, the religious landscape in America is evolving, with the fastest growing group being people who are unaffiliated, currently at 23%. A second key trend I have observed is the increasingly organized efforts to uplift and support religious diversity and interfaith understanding as an important component of equity and inclusion strategy in civic, educational, and work environments. A recent study from the Fetzer Institute found that “the more strongly a person identifies as spiritual, the more likely they are to believe it is very important to contribute to greater good in the world.”
For our part, PACE is three years into our own set of experiments to help our field better understand the depth and nuances of the intersection between religion and democracy. Informed by these experiments, we used new data from our Civic Language Perceptions Project (CLPP) to explore the following questions in a deep dive session:
- How do Americans with a religious affiliation or identity differ in their perception of civic concepts from those who do not hold a religious affiliation? And within those who are considered religious, do Christians vary from other traditions?
- What impact does religion have on the civic activities that Americans think are important to ensure democracy works?
- How (if at all) do differences in perceptions of civics based on religion vary from perceptions based on other elements of identity or experience– particularly politics?
You can view the recording of the deep dive session, download the slide deck, and check out the Civic Language + Religion infographic.
Analysis and Findings
To investigate the general impact of religious affiliation on perception of words and civic activities, we clustered together the responses from people with a stated affiliation to any of the major religious traditions together, and then grouped atheist, agnostic, and none responses together in a “no affiliation” category. In doing so, we found:
- People with a religious affiliation were 6.17% more likely to be positive towards the various terms than those who are religiously unaffiliated.
- Nationally, the most positively rated word was unity and the most negatively rated word was privilege. This was true for the two religious categories as well, though the religiously unaffiliated group was less positive towards unity (66% positive versus 70% nationally and 72% religiously affiliated), and more negative toward privilege (40% negative versus 37% nationally and 35% religiously affiliated).
- Words with the most positive alignment between religiously affiliated and unaffiliated (the smallest positive differential) were common good, diversity, and racial equity.
- Words with the least positive alignment between religiously affiliated and unaffiliated (the biggest positive differential) were patriotism, liberty, and citizen.
- When asked “what activities do you think are important to ensure democracy work?” the top five ranked activities for both groups were the same (though they fell in a slightly different order): voting, serving on a jury, attending public meetings, volunteering, and advocating for issues.
- Both groups thought voting was the most important activity, though there was a noticeable differential between the two groups (72% for religiously affiliated; 65% for religiously unaffiliated).
- 16% of people without a religious affiliation thought none of the participatory activities were important to ensure democracy works. That percentage dropped by half (8%) for people with a religious affiliation.
Given that in the United States, 70% of Americans identify as Christian, we wanted to understand how that identity may vary from other religious affiliations. So we clustered the responses of the various Christian affiliations together and compared them with a cluster made up of people from other religious traditions (Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Orthodox, and Hindu), and with the “no affiliation” group (agnostics, atheists, and nones). Looking at the data this way, we found:
- Christians were 5.92% more likely to be positive towards the various terms than people affiliated with other religious or secular identities.
- Christians and people affiliated with other identities demonstrated considerable overlap related to concepts that were perceived as positive; within the two groups’ top 10 most positive words, 9 words overlapped. It is also interesting to note that Christians were more positive towards patriotism, and those from other traditions and the unaffiliated were more positive towards racial equity.
- While they represent a small portion of the overall sample, Hindus were the group that gave the highest positive rating to 15 of the 21 terms. Atheists were the most positive towards 4 of the terms, and Muslims and Agnostics were the most positive toward one term each. Notably, Christians were not the most positive group toward any of the 21 terms.
One other interesting trend that we noticed in the data came from adding on the additional layer of political ideology. The data show that as it relates to our 21 civic terms, where Americans are politically aligned, we are religiously unaligned and where we are religiously aligned, we are politically unaligned. For example, religiously affiliated and unaffiliated groups have a 14% positive differential in their views on the word civility; however liberals and conservatives only have a 0.7% positive differential. Contrast that to the word diversity, where there is only a 0.4% positive differential between the religiously affiliated and unaffiliated, but there is a 32.6% positive differential between liberals and conservatives.
These trends and findings in the data invite further investigation and exploration. In particular, these questions and topics were raised during the deep dive session as potential areas for future exploration:
- How does an age overlay add complexity to this picture given that younger Americans tend to be less religiously affiliated than older Americans?
- At the intersection of religious identity and other demographics and identity characteristics, what more can we learn?
- How can we dig more deeply into the diversity within religious communities, particularly the large populations of Christians and religiously unaffiliated?
- How can we use additional qualitative research to see the connection between how people think about the language and how that affects their behavior? For example, they might rank attending public meetings highly but might not ever attend public meetings.
- What can we make of the gap emerging between how issues might frame causes as “fights” or “battles” while the PACE research is showing that language like “civility” and “unity” is favorable to large groups within the American public?
- How can religious communities mitigate against the growing gaps between what these words mean within the American public?
On these questions, and others, we are eager to continue learning with you. PACE is offering $500 mini-grants to support people who want to dig into the data and create something customized with it. We encourage you to apply today and share with your networks!
In addition, keep an eye on our Medium page and twitter as we publish more learnings on this topic, and please keep us updated on how this data is helping you and your work by emailing Language@PACEfunders.org. We look forward to learning from you!
To learn more about the Civic Language Perceptions Project, please visit www.PACEFunders.org/Language.
