Religious Conservatism and Moral Community
Religious Conservatism, Moral Community, and Social Cohesion
Religion, Morality, and Social Cohesion
Religious conservatism generally argues that religious belief and practice help sustain moral order, social stability, and community life. The collected sources examine how faith traditions reinforce shared values, encourage personal responsibility, strengthen institutions between the individual and the state, and contribute to social trust and communal identity. They also explore the relationship between religious participation, moral norms, authority, and political attitudes across different societies.
Family, Marriage, and Intergenerational Transmission
Many of the sources focus on the family as the primary institution through which religious beliefs, moral values, and political identities are transmitted across generations. Research examines marriage, parenting, fertility, religious upbringing, fatherhood, family stability, and the role of parents in passing religious commitments to children. Comparative studies also explore how different religious traditions shape household organization and family life.
Congregations, Civil Society, and Community Life
The collection highlights churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious organizations as important contributors to civil society. Numerous studies examine how congregations encourage volunteerism, charitable giving, civic participation, neighborhood engagement, social trust, and mutual assistance. Conservative perspectives often emphasize that strong voluntary institutions reduce dependence on government while strengthening local communities.
Religious Conservatism and Political Mobilization
Several works examine how religious beliefs influence political participation, voting behavior, party identification, and public policy preferences. The sources analyze religious voting blocs, ideological movements, conservative political organizations, and the relationship between faith, elections, and public debates over morality, education, abortion, sexuality, and religious liberty.
Christian Nationalism and Traditional-Values Politics
A significant portion of the material examines Christian nationalism and related political movements. These works explore how religious identity intersects with national identity, authority, democracy, social hierarchy, family values, immigration, race, gender, and political violence. The collection includes both descriptive analyses and critical examinations of Christian nationalist ideology.
Global Religious Conservatism
The sources extend beyond the United States by examining religious conservatism in Europe, Russia, Canada, India, and other regions. Topics include traditional values politics, Orthodox Christianity, Islamic political thought, nationalism, secularism, family policy, cultural preservation, and the interaction between religion and democratic institutions around the world.
Benefits, Boundaries, and Critiques of Moral Community
The collection presents both supportive and critical perspectives on religious communities. Research explores how religious participation can foster trust, cooperation, charitable activity, social support, and civic engagement while also examining potential drawbacks, including exclusion, prejudice, conformity, group boundaries, authoritarian tendencies, and conflicts between competing moral communities.
Moral Foundations, Authority, and Sacred Values
Numerous sources examine the psychological foundations of religious and political conservatism. Topics include Moral Foundations Theory, sacred values, authority, loyalty, purity, moral conviction, prosocial behavior, religious cooperation, personality, and the evolution of moral communities. These studies seek to explain why religious traditions often produce durable systems of shared norms and collective identity.
Congregational Belonging and Religious Socialization
Many studies investigate how religious communities reproduce themselves across generations through worship, education, ritual, social networks, schools, families, and congregational life. The literature examines religious commitment, conversion, social capital, immigrant congregations, youth development, homeschooling, higher education, and the long-term transmission of religious identity.
Family Values, Gender, and Sexual Morality
The sources examine conservative approaches to marriage, sexuality, gender roles, fatherhood, motherhood, domestic life, and family organization. They include research on evangelical Christianity, gender ideology, marital commitment, parenting, sexual ethics, homeschooling, and religious understandings of family responsibility and social order.
Education, Youth, and Cultural Reproduction
Several works focus on schools, colleges, homeschooling, youth religious development, and cultural transmission. These studies explore how educational institutions influence moral identity, citizenship, political participation, religious commitment, parental authority, and debates surrounding religion in public education.
Conclusion
Taken together, these sources provide a comprehensive overview of religious conservatism as both a philosophical tradition and a social phenomenon. They examine how religious belief influences family life, civic institutions, moral values, political participation, education, and national identity while also exploring competing interpretations of religion's role in democratic societies. The collection includes empirical research, historical scholarship, policy analysis, and commentary representing a broad range of academic, governmental, journalistic, and policy perspectives.
Religion, Morality, and Social Cohesion
Faith First Conservatives
| Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | June 10, 2026
This political-typology report examines Americans who combine deeply conservative social values, strong belief in God, religious participation, and comparatively communitarian political attitudes.
The Role of Religion and Morality in Conservatism
| Political Science Institute | Political Science Institute | October 3, 2025
This overview explains the conservative belief that religion sustains moral order, social cohesion, personal restraint, inherited obligations, and institutions situated between individuals and the state.
The Influence of Religious Beliefs on Social Behavior and Community Cohesion
| Seth Kimani | ResearchGate | June 26, 2024
This study reviews how religious beliefs influence social conduct, shared norms, mutual assistance, moral identity, and cohesion within communities.
Why Is Religion Important?
| Kendra Cherry | Verywell Mind | March 2, 2023
This article surveys research suggesting that religion can provide moral guidance, social support, communal belonging, healthy routines, and meaning during adversity.
Binding Morality and Perceived Harm as Sources of Moral-Regulation Law Support
| Jasmine R. Silver and colleagues | Law & Society Review | September 2020
This study finds that religious conservatives are especially likely to support laws protecting collective morality, purity, authority, and traditional social expectations.
Values and Public Opinion
| Paul Goren | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics | February 28, 2020
This article explains how authority, conformity, moral traditionalism, religion, equality, and other values influence political opinions and social-policy preferences.
Religion and Living Arrangements Around the World
| Stephanie Kramer and colleagues | Pew Research Center | December 12, 2019
This global report documents how religious traditions intersect with household size, extended-family living, marriage, gender roles, and intergenerational community.
Household Patterns by Religion
| Stephanie Kramer and colleagues | Pew Research Center | December 12, 2019
This chapter compares the family and household arrangements associated with Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and religious nonaffiliation.
Religious Communication and Persuasion
| Paul A. Djupe and Brian R. Calfano | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics | September 30, 2019
This review considers how clergy, congregations, religious messages, and political appeals shape values, group identity, voting, and public conduct.
Personality, Politics, and Religion
| Christopher M. Federico | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics | March 26, 2019
This review examines connections among personality, religiosity, moral traditionalism, authoritarian attitudes, and political conservatism.
Morality in Context: A Multilevel Analysis of the Relationship Between Religion and Values in Europe
| Ingrid Storm | Politics and Religion | December 2016
This comparative study investigates which moral values are most strongly connected to religion and how national religious environments shape those associations.
Religious Practices and Experiences
| Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | November 3, 2015
This survey chapter measures worship attendance, prayer, religious experience, scripture reading, and other practices that reinforce participation in moral communities.
Our Moral Motivations
| Kirsten Weir | American Psychological Association | June 2012
This introduction to moral-foundations research explains why conservative and religious groups often emphasize loyalty, authority, sanctity, shared identity, and community-preserving obligations.
Religion, Religiosity, and the Moral Divide in Canadian Politics
| Adrian Ang and John Petrocik | Politics and Religion | March 2012
This article shows that religious identity and religious commitment remain important predictors of Canadian attitudes on contested moral issues.
Why Religion Matters Even More
| Patrick F. Fagan | The Heritage Foundation | December 18, 2006
This updated report presents religious participation as a source of family stability, compassion, self-control, educational attainment, and community well-being.
Why Religion Matters
| Patrick F. Fagan | The Heritage Foundation | January 25, 1996
This conservative policy report argues that religious practice strengthens marriage, personal responsibility, moral judgment, education, health, and social stability.
Family, Marriage, and Intergenerational Transmission
The Role of Religion in Strengthening Family Values
| Author Not Listed | Texas Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies | 2025
This paper presents the family as both a social and religious institution that transmits moral identity, behavioral norms, duty, and intergenerational continuity.
Most U.S. Parents Pass Along Their Religion and Politics to Their Children
| Alan Cooperman | Pew Research Center | May 10, 2023
This analysis finds that American parents commonly transmit both religious affiliation and political identity, illustrating the family’s role in reproducing moral communities.
How Today’s Parents Say Their Parenting Differs From Their Upbringing
| Rachel Minkin and Juliana Menasce Horowitz | Pew Research Center | January 24, 2023
This report explores how parents preserve, revise, or reject inherited approaches to religion, discipline, emotional development, independence, and family authority.
Religion, Family, and Children in India
| Jonathan Evans and Neha Sahgal | Pew Research Center | June 29, 2021
This report examines how Indian families transmit religious identity through marriage, rituals, child-rearing, festivals, and household religious practices.
Transmission of Faith in Families
| Jesse Smith and colleagues | Sociology of Religion | November 17, 2020
This study finds especially strong intergenerational religious transmission among conservative families whose parents consistently model and discuss their faith.
Shared Beliefs Between Parents and Teens
| Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | September 10, 2020
This survey explores the substantial overlap between parents’ and teenagers’ religious beliefs, practices, identities, and conceptions of morality.
Religious Beliefs Among American Adolescents
| Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | September 10, 2020
This report examines adolescents’ beliefs about God, morality, scripture, religious certainty, and the influence of their parents’ faith.
Gender, Family and Marriage, Same-Sex Marriage and Religion
| Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | December 17, 2019
This survey documents ideological and religious divisions over marriage, parenting, gender roles, same-sex relationships, and the meaning of family life.
The Supreme Court Weds Gay Marriage to Family Values
| Jonathan Rauch | Brookings Institution | June 26, 2015
This commentary argues that the legalization of same-sex marriage affirmed the conservative communitarian idea that marriage is a stabilizing institution and social commitment.
Teaching the Children
| Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | September 18, 2014
This survey finds that conservatives place especially high importance on teaching children religious faith and obedience, while liberals emphasize tolerance and independence.
Religion and Family Formation
| Christopher G. Ellison and colleagues | Journal of Divorce & Remarriage | October 2010
This research considers how religious participation, doctrine, and congregational networks influence marriage, divorce, parenting, and family stability.
Religion and the Timing of First Births in the United States
| Evelyn L. Lehrer | Demography | May 2006
This demographic study examines how religious affiliation and commitment shape marriage, fertility, sexual behavior, and the formation of families.
Religion and Father Involvement
| W. Bradford Wilcox | Journal of Marriage and Family | August 2003
This research finds links between religious participation, traditional family commitments, paternal identity, and fathers’ involvement with children.
Religion and the Maintenance of Marital Commitment
| Paul R. Amato and Alan Booth | Journal of Marriage and the Family | August 1997
This article examines how shared religious commitments and communities can reinforce marital permanence and discourage divorce.
Conservative Protestantism and the Division of Household Labor
| John P. Bartkowski and Xu Xiaohe | Journal of Marriage and the Family | February 1996
This study analyzes how conservative Protestant beliefs shape gendered expectations, domestic labor, authority, and negotiation within marriage.
Religious Involvement and Marital Quality
| Christopher G. Ellison | Journal of Marriage and the Family | February 1992
This influential study investigates whether religious involvement strengthens marital happiness, commitment, shared values, and social support.
Congregations, Civil Society, and Community Life
The Social Breakdown
| Yuval Levin, Tim Carney and colleagues | American Enterprise Institute | May 4, 2023
This report discusses weakening marriage, community, religion, social trust, and civic institutions, with particular attention to differences across social classes.
Restoring Civil Society
| Lee C. Sheahan | The Heritage Foundation | March 7, 2023
This report argues that families, religious institutions, neighborhoods, and voluntary organizations cultivate cooperation, responsibility, belonging, and shared moral habits.
How Expressive Individualism Threatens Civil Society
| Carl R. Trueman | The Heritage Foundation | May 27, 2021
This report criticizes forms of individualism that treat inherited religion, marriage, family authority, and communal obligation as obstacles to personal authenticity.
Back to Basics for Conservative Education Reform
| Frederick M. Hess and RJ Martin | American Enterprise Institute | March 5, 2020
This article argues that education should recognize the formative roles of parents, families, churches, local communities, and informal social relationships.
Anthropology Defines the Right
| Yuval Levin | American Enterprise Institute | October 27, 2014
This essay explains conservatism as an effort to preserve evolved institutions—including families, religious communities, and traditions—that form responsible human beings.
Understanding Freedom for Religion
| Jennifer A. Marshall | The Heritage Foundation | July 8, 2011
This article defends religious liberty as protection for active religious participation in family, community, charitable, educational, and public life.
Not for Sale
| Yuval Levin | American Enterprise Institute | June 2, 2010
This essay argues that family, religion, community, and culture create moral goods that cannot be reduced to market transactions or individual consumer choices.
Godless Secularism Does Not Define Us
| Jennifer A. Marshall | The Heritage Foundation | March 31, 2010
This commentary argues that religious freedom permits faith to shape citizens’ moral habits and public contributions without government coercion.
Religion and Volunteering in America
| John Wilson and Thomas Janoski | Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly | June 2008
This article examines how congregations recruit volunteers, establish norms of service, and connect religious participation with civic and charitable activity.
America Is Not Too Religious
| E. J. Dionne Jr. and Jean Bethke Elshtain | Brookings Institution | February 1, 2007
This discussion emphasizes religion’s influence on family life, civic organizations, political participation, social reform, and American public culture.
A Community of Faith
| Rod Dreher | American Enterprise Institute | January 22, 2007
This article profiles conservative Catholics attempting to build a community organized around shared worship, family life, localism, tradition, and mutual obligation.
Private Faith, Big Government
| Ryan Messmore | The Heritage Foundation | September 25, 2006
This report argues that treating religion as purely private can weaken churches’ perceived responsibility for addressing communal needs and public moral questions.
Churches, Charity, and Civil Society
| Joseph Loconte | The Heritage Foundation | February 27, 2004
This commentary discusses the capacity and limitations of congregations and faith-based organizations as providers of charity, welfare, solidarity, and civic participation.
Religion and Social Capital
| Corwin Smidt | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | June 2003
This study explores how religious communities generate trust, networks, volunteering, civic skills, and cooperative relationships.
Religious Congregations and Welfare Provision
| Mark Chaves | Social Forces | September 2000
This article evaluates the extent to which congregations provide food, shelter, counseling, education, and other community services.
Civil Society
| Heritage Foundation Staff | The Heritage Foundation | No Date
This resource collection presents families and religious organizations as central institutions for meeting social needs outside government and the commercial marketplace.
Religious Conservatism and Political Mobilization
Religion, Partisanship and Ideology
| Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | February 26, 2025
This report documents the relationship between religious commitment, racial and denominational identity, Republican affiliation, Democratic affiliation, and political ideology.
UK Populists Mix Faith and Politics with “Judeo-Christian Values”
| Aletha Adu | The Guardian | February 22, 2025
This article investigates how British conservative and populist figures invoke Christian civilization, family, demographic renewal, and cultural cohesion.
Christian Influence Grows as Britain’s Conservative Party Shifts Rightward
| Jim Pickard and Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe | Financial Times | April 7, 2024
This report examines the increasing prominence of evangelical and socially conservative Christian voices within Britain’s Conservative Party.
The New Traditionalists
| Various Authors | American Enterprise Institute | May 2020
This collection examines culturally conservative thinkers who prioritize Judeo-Christian inheritance, family, nation, community, tradition, and limits on individual autonomy.
The Inclusion-Moderation Thesis and the U.S. Republican Party
| Mark J. Rozell and Clyde Wilcox | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics | August 28, 2019
This analysis explains how conservative Christianity transformed the Republican Party while partisan integration also reshaped the Christian Right.
Electoral Choice and Religion: United States
| Geoffrey C. Layman | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics | November 20, 2018
This review explains how religious commitment and doctrinal conservatism influence partisan identity, voting behavior, political mobilization, and issue preferences in the United States.
Electoral Choice and Religion: An Overview
This article surveys how religious identities, clerical-secular divisions, socialization, and party appeals shape voting across democratic societies.
Millennials, Religion, and Politics in the United States
| Rachel M. McCleary and Robert J. Barro | American Enterprise Institute | May 2018
This report explores declining religious affiliation alongside Millennials’ attitudes toward family roles, abortion, sexuality, political identity, and social engagement.
Economic Values Survey
| Robert P. Jones and Daniel Cox | Public Religion Research Institute | July 18, 2013
This survey compares religious conservatives, religious progressives, moderates, and nonreligious Americans on morality, personal responsibility, capitalism, and government.
Bully Pulpit
| Jane Mayer | The New Yorker | June 18, 2012
This profile examines the American Family Association’s use of broadcasting, religious networks, and moral campaigning to mobilize conservative Christians.
A Generation in Transition
This report examines the religious, moral, cultural, and political values of college-age Millennials during a period of generational transition.
Religion and the American Conservative Movement
| Steven P. Miller | Perspectives on Politics | December 2010
This scholarship examines how evangelicalism, Catholicism, anticommunism, family values, and moral activism contributed to modern American conservatism.
The Moral Majority and the Politics of the Christian Right
| PBS Staff | American Experience | October 11, 2010
This historical overview describes how conservative Christians organized around abortion, education, sexuality, family values, and opposition to secular cultural change.
How Would God Vote?
| E. J. Dionne Jr. | Brookings Institution | 2004
This introductory chapter examines how religious convictions, moral arguments, communities of faith, and competing interpretations of scripture enter electoral politics.
There Is No “Catholic Vote.” And Yet, It Matters
| E. J. Dionne Jr. | Brookings Institution | October 20, 2000
This commentary describes tensions among Catholic teachings on abortion, economic justice, tradition, community, markets, punishment, and political allegiance.
Christian Nationalism and Traditional-Values Politics
Mapping Christian Nationalism Across the 50 States
| Public Religion Research Institute | PRRI | February 17, 2026
This report maps Christian-nationalist beliefs and their relationships with religious affiliation, education, age, region, party identity, and social attitudes.
Christian Nationalism Across All 50 States
| Public Religion Research Institute | PRRI | February 4, 2025
This survey measures Christian-nationalist adherents, sympathizers, skeptics, and rejecters throughout the United States.
One Leader Under God
| Robert P. Jones and colleagues | Public Religion Research Institute | September 10, 2024
This report analyzes connections among Christian nationalism, authoritarian leadership, political violence, social hierarchy, and beliefs about American identity.
Religious Change in America
| Melissa Deckman and colleagues | Public Religion Research Institute | March 27, 2024
This report explores religious switching, disaffiliation, worship attendance, community attachment, political disagreement, and reasons people remain in congregations.
Challenges in Moving Toward a More Inclusive Democracy
| Robert P. Jones and colleagues | Public Religion Research Institute | October 27, 2022
This American Values Survey examines religion, racial change, Christian nationalism, immigration, gender, democracy, and political division.
Christian Nationalism and Political Violence
| Andrew L. Whitehead, Samuel L. Perry and Joseph O. Baker | Social Problems | August 2022
This study links Christian-nationalist ideology with greater acceptance of political violence under circumstances perceived as threatening the nation’s moral order.
The Flag and the Cross
| Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry | Yale University Press | April 5, 2022
This overview traces the historical development of white Christian nationalism and its vision of America as a divinely favored moral community.
Christian Nationalism and COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy
| Samuel L. Perry, Andrew L. Whitehead and Joshua B. Grubbs | Socius | June 2021
This research examines how distrust of secular institutions and beliefs about divine protection influenced some Christian nationalists’ responses to public-health guidance.
Christian Nationalism and Traditional Gender Ideology
| Samuel L. Perry, Andrew L. Whitehead and Joshua B. Grubbs | Sociological Perspectives | June 2020
This study examines how Christian nationalism is associated with patriarchal understandings of family, masculinity, femininity, and social authority.
The Power Worshippers
| Katherine Stewart | Bloomsbury | March 3, 2020
This critical account investigates organizations that seek to transform American institutions according to conservative Christian political and moral doctrines.
Taking America Back for God
| Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry | Oxford University Press | February 25, 2020
This research-based account explains Christian nationalism as a cultural framework concerning authority, family, race, gender, national identity, and social order.
Christian Nationalism and White Racial Boundaries
| Samuel L. Perry and Andrew L. Whitehead | Socius | August 2018
This article investigates how Christian-nationalist ideas can reinforce racialized definitions of legitimate American identity and communal membership.
Make America Christian Again
| Andrew L. Whitehead, Samuel L. Perry and Joseph O. Baker | Social Problems | February 2018
This research analyzes Christian nationalism as a cultural framework linking religion, national identity, social boundaries, and conservative politics.
Christian Nationalism and Opposition to Same-Sex Marriage
This study finds that Christian-nationalist beliefs predict opposition to same-sex marriage beyond ordinary religious affiliation and worship attendance.
Global Religious Conservatism
The Global Resistance to LGBTIQ Rights
| Phillip M. Ayoub | Journal of Democracy | January 2022
This article examines how conservative religious organizations and governments mobilize traditional-family and religious-freedom arguments against expanding LGBTIQ rights.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s Declaration on Human Rights
| Turan Kayaoglu | Brookings Institution | September 28, 2020
This analysis examines conflicts between universal-rights claims and conservative Islamic appeals to religious principles, family values, and cultural sovereignty.
The Enduring Vulnerability of Liberal Democracy
| William A. Galston | Journal of Democracy | July 2020
This essay considers traditionalist criticism that liberal individualism erodes religious communities, moral distinctions, inherited identities, and communal obligations.
Thirty Years of World Politics: What Has Changed?
| Ivan Krastev | Journal of Democracy | January 2020
This essay discusses a transnational conservatism that defends national traditions, religion, family, cultural continuity, and opposition to liberal social change.
Religious Traditions in Politics: Latter-day Saints
| Quin Monson and David Campbell | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics | September 30, 2019
This article traces Mormon political development, communal organization, persecution, moral teachings, family commitments, and eventual alignment with American conservatism.
Imaginary Muslims
| Katarzyna Górak-Sosnowska and Marta Pachocka | Brookings Institution | July 24, 2019
This study explains how Poland’s populist right invokes Catholic identity, national tradition, moral community, and fear of Islam despite a very small Muslim population.
Ambivalent Nativism
| Shadi Hamid and Rashid Dar | Brookings Institution | July 24, 2019
This paper analyzes how religion, immigration, nationalism, cultural threat, and perceived moral difference shape attitudes toward Muslim Americans.
In Europe, Democracy Erodes from the Right
| Anna Grzymala-Busse | Journal of Democracy | January 2019
This analysis describes European voters who favor traditional families, national sovereignty, cultural homogeneity, religious inheritance, and restrictions on minority rights.
Explaining Eastern Europe: Imitation and Its Discontents
| Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes | Journal of Democracy | July 2018
This essay explains how conservative Eastern Europeans reacted against Western secularism, multiculturalism, changing gender norms, and same-sex marriage.
Illiberal Democracy and the Struggle on the Right
| William A. Galston | Journal of Democracy | January 2018
This article examines conservative arguments for tradition, religion, nation, and inherited political institutions against liberal universalism and rationalism.
Secularism and Politics
| Ahmet T. Kuru | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics | March 29, 2017
This comparative review examines how secularism, established religion, religious revival, and political authority interact in different national settings.
The Geopolitics of Traditional Values
| Kristina Stoeckl | Religion, State & Society | August 2016
This research describes international alliances among religious conservatives campaigning around family values, sexuality, sovereignty, and opposition to liberal human-rights norms.
The Religious and Moral Origins of German Conservative Social Policy
| Doron Avraham | Journal of Policy History | April 2016
This historical study explains how German conservatives connected social policy with Christian duty, paternal authority, moral discipline, and the preservation of social hierarchy.
Religious Conservatism and the New Russian State
| Kristina Stoeckl | Religion, State & Society | December 2015
This article examines Russian Orthodox traditional-values politics and its promotion of family, national sovereignty, religious identity, and resistance to Western liberalism.
Benefits, Boundaries, and Critiques of Moral Community
Bridging or Breaking
| Rochana Chaturvedi, Sugat Chaturvedi and Elena Zheleva | arXiv | February 19, 2024
This research finds that interreligious interactions may reduce polarization in some circumstances but increase group conformity during communal conflict.
Social Justice, Anti-Poverty Work, and Religion
| David Sikkink | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics | September 30, 2019
This article compares religious approaches that emphasize structural reform with conservative approaches stressing charity, personal conduct, family responsibility, and local institutions.
Segregation in Religion Networks
| Jiantao Hu, Qian-Ming Zhang and Tao Zhou | arXiv | February 16, 2018
This network study finds that religious affiliation can promote cooperation and belonging within groups while producing substantial separation from members of other religions.
Religious Communities and the Formation of Moral Identity
| James Arthur | Journal of Moral Education | December 2012
This article discusses how worship, narratives, role models, institutions, and communal practices contribute to the formation of moral character.
Religion and Prejudice in the United States
| Deborah L. Hall, David C. Matz and Wendy Wood | Psychological Bulletin | September 2010
This meta-analysis finds that religion’s relationship with prejudice varies according to intrinsic commitment, fundamentalism, group identity, and the social targets being evaluated.
Religion and Charitable Giving
| Arthur C. Brooks | Voluntas | December 2007
This study considers the strong association between religious participation, charitable donations, volunteering, and support for community institutions.
Religion and Civic Engagement
| Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart | Scandinavian Political Studies | June 2007
This comparative research evaluates whether religious participation fosters civic involvement, organizational membership, voting, volunteering, and social trust.
Religion and the Moral Order
This research reviews how religious beliefs and institutions shape judgments about sexuality, family life, gender, authority, and acceptable conduct.
Conservative Religion and Support for the Welfare State
| Darren E. Sherkat and Christopher G. Ellison | Social Forces | June 2005
This study analyzes how religious conservatism, beliefs about individual responsibility, and moral judgments influence attitudes toward public assistance.
Religious Context and Volunteering
| Philip Schwadel and John D. McCarthy | American Sociological Review | October 2004
This research investigates how congregational environments, religious identity, and social networks encourage volunteering both inside and outside religious organizations.
Religion and Trust
This study examines whether religious participation increases generalized social trust or primarily strengthens trust among members of the same moral community.
Religion, Group Threat, and Intolerance
| George Yancey | Social Forces | September 2003
This study examines how strong religious identification can produce solidarity among believers while contributing to suspicion or intolerance toward perceived out-groups.
Religion, Self-Control, and Social Conformity
| Mark D. Regnerus | Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency | February 2001
This study explores whether religious involvement promotes self-control, conventional friendships, parental monitoring, and adherence to communal behavioral expectations.
Religion, Authoritarianism, and Moral Certainty
| Stanley Feldman and Karen Stenner | Political Psychology | December 1997
This article helps explain why perceived threats to social unity can activate demands for conformity, authority, punishment, and defense of traditional moral norms.
Religion as a Source of Social Control
| Rodney Stark | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | June 1996
This research examines whether belief in supernatural accountability and participation in religious communities discourage conduct defined as immoral or antisocial.
Religious Attendance and Social Support
| Neal Krause | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | December 1995
This study examines how congregations provide emotional assistance, practical aid, companionship, shared identity, and support during illness or personal crisis.
Religious Fundamentalism and Out-Group Hostility
| Bob Altemeyer and Bruce Hunsberger | Journal of Social Issues | September 1992
This research examines associations among fundamentalism, authoritarian submission, conventionalism, moral certainty, and negative attitudes toward religious or cultural outsiders.
Religious Homophily and Social Networks
| Peter V. Marsden | American Journal of Sociology | May 1987
This foundational social-network research helps explain why people form relationships with religiously and morally similar individuals, reinforcing cohesive but bounded communities.
Committed to Availability, Conflicted About Morality
Moral Foundations, Authority, and Sacred Values
Bound Together for God and Country: The Binding Moral Foundations of Christian Nationalism
| Chelsea J. Reynolds and colleagues | Personality and Individual Differences | March 1, 2020
This study connects Christian nationalism with moral concerns involving loyalty, authority, and sanctity, showing how binding moral foundations support visions of a unified religious nation.
Moralizing Gods, Prosociality, and the Rise of Complex Societies
| Harvey Whitehouse and colleagues | Nature | March 20, 2019
This global historical analysis investigates whether moralizing supernatural beliefs emerged before or after the growth of complex societies.
The Moralization of Rationality
This research explores how people transform preferred ways of thinking into moral convictions that distinguish virtuous community members from outsiders.
The Cultural Evolution of Prosocial Religions
| Joseph Henrich and colleagues | Behavioral and Brain Sciences | January 2016
This article explains how rituals, doctrines, supernatural monitoring, and institutional discipline may help religious groups sustain cooperation.
Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict
| Ara Norenzayan | Princeton University Press | September 8, 2015
This book examines how belief in powerful moralizing gods contributed to social cooperation, expanding political communities, and conflict between religious groups.
The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality
| Ara Norenzayan and colleagues | Science | February 8, 2013
This article argues that religious beliefs and rituals helped extend cooperation beyond kin by encouraging accountability to morally watchful supernatural agents.
Morality Binds and Blinds
| Jonathan Haidt | Religion, Brain & Behavior | August 2012
This essay argues that shared sacred values promote trust, cooperation, sacrifice, and solidarity while potentially limiting sympathy toward outsiders.
The Righteous Mind
| Jonathan Haidt | Pantheon Books | March 13, 2012
This book explains how moral intuitions bind people into religious and political communities while also contributing to disagreement and polarization between groups.
Mapping the Moral Domain
| Jesse Graham and colleagues | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | August 2011
This article develops Moral Foundations Theory and explains how communities construct moral systems around care, justice, loyalty, authority, and sacredness.
The Psychology of Moral Conviction
| Linda J. Skitka | Social and Personality Psychology Compass | April 2010
This review explains how moral convictions motivate political action and shape judgments about legitimacy, authority, procedural fairness, and social belonging.
Religiousness as a Cultural Adaptation of Basic Traits
| Vassilis Saroglou | Personality and Individual Differences | March 2010
This article argues that religious beliefs and institutions translate personality tendencies into culturally meaningful practices, virtues, identities, and social obligations.
Why Conservatives and Liberals Differ in Moral Foundations
This influential study argues that conservatives distribute moral concern across care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity more evenly than liberals.
Religion and Prosocial Behavior
| Ara Norenzayan and Azim F. Shariff | Psychological Bulletin | January 2008
This review considers how belief in morally concerned supernatural agents can support generosity, cooperation, trust, and rule-following within large communities.
God Is Watching You
| Azim F. Shariff and Ara Norenzayan | Psychological Science | September 2007
This experiment suggests that reminders of God and moral institutions can increase generosity toward strangers under certain conditions.
Sacred Bounds on Rational Resolution of Violent Political Conflict
| Jeremy Ginges and colleagues | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | May 1, 2007
This study finds that material incentives can intensify opposition when political disputes involve sacred religious or communal values.
The Psychology of the Sacred
| Scott Atran and Robert Axelrod | Behavioral and Brain Sciences | December 2005
This article considers why religious and national communities treat certain beliefs, symbols, places, and obligations as sacred and nonnegotiable.
Moral Conviction: Another Contributor to Attitude Strength or Something More?
This article examines why morally grounded attitudes inspire certainty, political participation, resistance to compromise, and intolerance of opposing positions.
Authority Ranking and Religious Conservatism
| Alan Page Fiske | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | August 2002
This research helps explain moral communities organized around hierarchy, deference, reciprocal duties, seniority, and legitimate authority.
Religion and the Five Factors of Personality
| Vassilis Saroglou | Personality and Individual Differences | June 2002
This review associates religiosity with personality patterns such as agreeableness, conscientiousness, social conformity, discipline, and commitment to communal norms.
Sacred Values and Cultural Conflict
| Philip E. Tetlock and colleagues | Trends in Cognitive Sciences | September 2000
This research examines how communities protect sacred values from ordinary bargaining and respond with moral outrage when those values are challenged.
Congregational Belonging and Religious Socialization
Bowling Alone
| Robert D. Putnam | Simon & Schuster | October 13, 2020
This book analyzes declining civic participation while identifying religious congregations as important sources of volunteering, trust, and community connection.
Religious Socialization: Sources of Influence and Influences of Agency
| Darren E. Sherkat | Review of Religious Research | June 2019
This review examines how families, congregations, schools, peers, spouses, and individual choices transmit religious beliefs and moral practices.
Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes
| Nancy T. Ammerman | Oxford University Press | September 12, 2013
This research explains how religious narratives and relationships shape everyday morality, family practices, workplace conduct, and community identity.
American Grace
| Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell | Simon & Schuster | October 5, 2010
This major study explores how congregations build friendship, charity, civic engagement, political identity, tolerance, and religious polarization.
Religion and the Life Course
| Michele Dillon | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | December 2007
This article explores how religious identity changes through adolescence, marriage, parenting, employment, aging, and participation in communities.
Habits of the Heart
| Robert N. Bellah and colleagues | University of California Press | September 17, 2007
This sociological classic contrasts individualism with traditions of family, religion, citizenship, and community obligation in American life.
God Needs No Passport
| Peggy Levitt | The New Press | July 24, 2007
This book explores how migrants maintain religious obligations and moral identities across national borders through congregations and transnational networks.
Pillars of Faith
| Nancy T. Ammerman | University of California Press | September 12, 2005
This book examines how diverse congregations organize worship, moral education, social service, leadership, and public participation.
The Churching of America, 1776–2005
| Roger Finke and Rodney Stark | Rutgers University Press | March 1, 2005
This historical study explains the growth of American congregations through competition, doctrinal commitment, community organization, and demanding religious participation.
Religion as Social Capital
| Corwin Smidt | Baylor University Press | June 15, 2003
This edited volume examines how religious organizations create social trust, community service, political engagement, and shared civic identities.
Religious Participation and the Formation of Social Capital
| Corwin Smidt | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | June 2003
This research investigates how congregations produce networks, trust, civic skills, volunteering, and relationships that connect members to public life.
Acts of Faith
| Rodney Stark and Roger Finke | University of California Press | August 1, 2000
This book uses rational-choice theory to explain religious commitment, congregational growth, moral discipline, conversion, and competition among faith communities.
Religion and the New Immigrants
| Helen Rose Ebaugh and Janet Saltzman Chafetz | AltaMira Press | February 15, 2000
This study explains how immigrant congregations combine traditional religious authority with adaptation to new cultural and political environments.
Religious Choices and Commitments
| Darren E. Sherkat and John Wilson | Social Forces | December 1998
This article examines how family background, social networks, life experiences, and personal preferences influence religious affiliation and commitment.
Gatherings in Diaspora
| R. Stephen Warner and Judith G. Wittner | Temple University Press | April 28, 1998
This collection examines how immigrant congregations preserve moral traditions, ethnic identity, mutual assistance, and intergenerational continuity.
Congregation and Community
| Nancy T. Ammerman | Rutgers University Press | December 1, 1996
This study examines how congregations respond to neighborhood change while preserving religious identity, communal memory, and relationships among members.
Why Strict Churches Are Strong
| Laurence R. Iannaccone | American Journal of Sociology | March 1994
This influential article argues that demanding religious groups can build commitment and solidarity by discouraging free-riding and requiring visible sacrifices.
The Good Society
| Robert N. Bellah and colleagues | Vintage Books | August 18, 1992
This book argues that strong institutions are necessary to cultivate moral responsibility, democratic participation, solidarity, and concern for the common good.
Sacrifice and Stigma: Reducing Free-Riding in Cults, Communes, and Other Collectives
| Laurence R. Iannaccone | Journal of Political Economy | April 1992
This study explains how costly rules, distinctive clothing, dietary restrictions, and behavioral discipline can strengthen tightly organized moral communities.
The Restructuring of American Religion
| Robert Wuthnow | Princeton University Press | July 21, 1988
This book describes how American religious divisions increasingly came to reflect conflicts between orthodox and progressive moral worldviews.
Family Values, Gender, and Sexual Morality
When Prayer Fails
| Katie E. Corcoran | New York University Press | September 1, 2016
This book investigates how conservative Christians interpret unanswered prayer through communal teachings about faith, morality, suffering, and divine purpose.
Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right
| Seth Dowland | University of Pennsylvania Press | October 20, 2015
This book traces how evangelical concerns about parenting, schooling, masculinity, sexuality, and household authority helped build the modern Christian Right.
The Act of Marriage and the Making of Christian Sexual Culture
| Amy DeRogatis | Church History | September 2015
This study examines evangelical teachings that place sexuality within marriage and portray sexual behavior as central to religious identity and moral order.
Saving Sex
| Amy DeRogatis | Oxford University Press | March 7, 2014
This book analyzes evangelical sex manuals, purity teachings, marital intimacy, and efforts to create a distinctively Christian sexual community.
Evangelicalism and the Politics of Domesticity
| Margaret Bendroth | Journal of American History | September 2011
This historical scholarship examines how conservative Protestantism linked domestic life, motherhood, male leadership, and national moral strength.
More Than a Monolith
| Philip Goff and Paul Harvey | Baylor University Press | March 15, 2008
This collection emphasizes diversity among American evangelicals while examining common concerns about family, morality, culture, race, and politics.
Religion and the Domestic Division of Labor
| Christopher G. Ellison and David A. Gay | Journal of Marriage and Family | February 2007
This research examines how religious traditions and beliefs influence the allocation of paid employment, childcare, and household work.
Faith and Fatherhood
This study investigates relationships among religious attendance, paternal identity, parenting practices, and emotional involvement with children.
Soft Patriarchs, New Men
| W. Bradford Wilcox | University of Chicago Press | October 15, 2004
This book examines how conservative Protestant churches promote male headship while also encouraging affectionate marriage, paternal involvement, and family responsibility.
Conservative Protestantism and Men’s Family Involvement
| W. Bradford Wilcox | Journal of Marriage and Family | August 2004
This research associates church participation with certain forms of paternal involvement, marital commitment, and family-centered masculine identity.
The Battle for the Family
| Michael J. McManus | Gender & Society | June 2004
This research examines religious conservative campaigns that portray marriage and traditional family structures as foundations of social order.
Religion and Fatherhood
| W. Bradford Wilcox | Journal of Marriage and Family | August 2003
This article examines how religious participation and traditional beliefs shape fathers’ time with children, discipline, affection, and domestic responsibility.
Religion and Marital Commitment
| Annette Mahoney and colleagues | Journal of Family Issues | August 2003
This article explores how viewing marriage as sacred can reinforce fidelity, sacrifice, forgiveness, permanence, and shared moral purpose.
Religion in the Home
| Annette Mahoney and colleagues | Journal of Family Psychology | December 2001
This review considers how religious beliefs and practices affect marriage, parenting, conflict resolution, child development, and family rituals.
Remaking the Godly Marriage
| John P. Bartkowski | Rutgers University Press | November 1, 2001
This book examines how evangelical marital teachings negotiate authority, companionship, sexuality, child-rearing, and changing gender expectations.
Symbolic Traditionalism and Pragmatic Egalitarianism
| Sally K. Gallagher | Gender & Society | June 2000
This study shows how evangelical families may affirm traditional gender symbols while practicing more flexible household arrangements.
Gender Ideology and Religious Commitment Among Conservative Protestants
| Gayle Kaufman | Journal of Marriage and the Family | November 1999
This study explores how religious commitment influences beliefs about motherhood, fatherhood, employment, domestic labor, and marital authority.
Evangelical Identity and Gendered Family Life
| Sally K. Gallagher and Christian Smith | Gender & Society | June 1999
This article examines how evangelical couples interpret male authority, female submission, marital partnership, and changing expectations within everyday family life.
Evangelicalism and the Persistence of Traditional Gender Attitudes
| John P. Bartkowski and Xiaohe Xu | Journal of Marriage and the Family | May 1998
This research examines the relationship between conservative Protestant beliefs and attitudes about employment, domestic authority, parenting, and gender roles.
The Promise Keepers: Servants, Soldiers, and Godly Men
| John P. Bartkowski | Gender & Society | December 1997
This article analyzes a conservative Christian men’s movement that combined masculine leadership with emotional openness, service, marital fidelity, and paternal duty.
Education, Youth, and Cultural Reproduction
Kingdom of Children
| R. L. Stollar | Princeton University Press | November 14, 2023
This history examines the evangelical homeschooling movement and debates over parental rights, child protection, gender, discipline, and religious freedom.
Handing Down the Faith
| Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk | Oxford University Press | November 12, 2020
This research identifies parental relationships, religious consistency, conversation, example, and community involvement as major influences on children’s faith.
Educating for American Democracy
| Jonathan Zimmerman | Theory & Research in Social Education | October 2019
This article considers conflicts over whether schools should transmit inherited moral traditions or emphasize pluralism, critical inquiry, and individual autonomy.
Losing Our Religion
| Christel Manning | Oxford University Press | May 1, 2015
This book examines how nonreligious parents teach morality, meaning, identity, and community outside traditional religious institutions.
Families and Faith
| Vern L. Bengtson, Norella M. Putney and Susan Harris | Oxford University Press | October 4, 2013
This multigenerational study examines why some families successfully transmit religious commitments while others experience religious change or disaffiliation.
Home Is Where the School Is
| Jennifer Lois | New York University Press | January 1, 2013
This study explores homeschooling mothers’ identities, sacrifice, family authority, religious commitments, and efforts to shelter children from unwanted cultural influences.
Premarital Sex in America
| Mark D. Regnerus and Jeremy E. Uecker | Oxford University Press | January 10, 2011
This study explores how religion, peer networks, gender expectations, relationships, and moral communities shape young adults’ sexual behavior.
Souls in Transition
| Christian Smith and Patricia Snell | Oxford University Press | September 14, 2009
This book follows young adults as they negotiate inherited faith, sexuality, education, work, independence, and declining institutional participation.
Homeschooling and the Redefinition of Citizenship
| Jennifer Lois | Educational Policy | March 2009
This article considers how homeschooling communities define parental responsibility, civic membership, educational authority, and freedom from state institutions.
God’s Harvard
| Hanna Rosin | Harcourt | September 10, 2007
This book examines Patrick Henry College and its effort to prepare conservative Christian students for public leadership while maintaining strict moral standards.
The Religious Socialization of American Youth
This research evaluates how parents, congregations, peers, schooling, and family structure influence adolescent religious participation.
Forbidden Fruit
| Mark D. Regnerus | Oxford University Press | February 12, 2007
This book investigates how religious beliefs, congregational involvement, family practices, and peer culture influence adolescent sexuality.
Religion and the Transition to Adulthood
| Mark D. Regnerus and Jeremy E. Uecker | American Sociological Review | February 2007
This article examines how leaving home, attending college, employment, marriage, and romantic relationships affect young adults’ religious involvement.
God on the Quad
| Naomi Schaefer Riley | St. Martin’s Press | September 1, 2005
This study profiles students at religious colleges and examines how faith-based institutions cultivate moral identity, community discipline, and public engagement.
Christian Smith on Moralistic Therapeutic Deism
| Princeton Theological Seminary | Princeton Theological Seminary | April 18, 2005
This discussion describes a widespread youth religion centered on personal happiness and niceness rather than demanding doctrine or communal obligation.
Soul Searching
| Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton | Oxford University Press | January 25, 2005
This major study examines American teenagers’ religious beliefs, moral language, congregational participation, family influences, and spiritual practices.
Schooling for the Culture Wars
| Melissa M. Deckman | University of Chicago Press | April 15, 2004
This book examines conservative Christian participation in local school boards and conflicts over sexuality, prayer, curricula, creationism, and parental authority.
Religion and Child Development
This research reviews how religious institutions and family practices influence children’s moral development, identity, behavior, relationships, and civic engagement.
The Content of Their Character
| Steven Hitlin | American Journal of Sociology | November 2003
This study examines how adolescents develop moral identity through social relationships, group membership, values, and perceived obligations to others.
The Bible in the Public Schools
| First Amendment Center and Bible Literacy Project | First Amendment Center | January 1, 1999
This guide addresses constitutional and educational questions surrounding the study of biblical texts in culturally and religiously diverse public schools.
Religious Conservatism, Politics, and Public Morality
The Evangelicals
| Frances FitzGerald | Simon & Schuster | April 4, 2017
This history examines evangelical communities, theological divisions, cultural institutions, political mobilization, and changing relationships with American society.
The Rise of the Christian Right in America
| Daniel K. Williams | Routledge | July 10, 2012
This book traces the coalition-building, moral concerns, denominational networks, and political strategies that produced the modern Christian Right.
Onward Christian Soldiers?
| Clyde Wilcox and Carin Robinson | Westview Press | September 23, 2010
This book surveys the religious right’s beliefs, institutions, grassroots activism, political alliances, successes, and limitations.
God’s Own Party
| Daniel K. Williams | Oxford University Press | July 12, 2010
This history explains how conservative Protestants connected anticommunism, family values, abortion, education, and national morality with Republican politics.
The Values Campaign?
| David E. Campbell and J. Quin Monson | British Journal of Political Science | July 2008
This article assesses how religious networks and moral issues influenced voter mobilization during the 2004 United States presidential election.
The Political Brain
| Drew Westen | PublicAffairs | June 5, 2007
This book examines how emotional narratives, moral identity, religion, and group loyalty shape political judgment more strongly than detached policy analysis.
Is There a Culture War?
| James Davison Hunter and Alan Wolfe | Brookings Institution Press | November 1, 2006
This debate evaluates whether Americans are deeply polarized over religion, family, sexuality, morality, and the role of tradition in public life.
The Culture War Is a Class War
| Ruy Teixeira | Contexts | November 2006
This article considers how economic position, education, geography, and religion interact in political conflicts commonly described as culture wars.
Religion and the 2004 Presidential Election
| John C. Green | American Politics Research | July 2006
This research examines how church attendance, evangelical identity, Catholicism, moral priorities, and partisan loyalty shaped electoral behavior.
The Culture War and the Coming Election
| Pew Research Center | Pew Research Center | May 15, 2006
This discussion considers how abortion, same-sex marriage, religion, family values, and secularism structure political divisions.
The Christian Right in Republican State Politics
| Kimberly H. Conger and John C. Green | American Politics Research | January 2004
This study examines how conservative religious activists influence Republican organizations, candidate selection, platforms, and state-level policy debates.
The Christian Right in American Politics
| John C. Green, Mark J. Rozell and Clyde Wilcox | Georgetown University Press | February 28, 2003
This collection analyzes conservative Christian organizations, electoral participation, policy objectives, internal diversity, and influence on political parties.
Religion and Democratic Citizenship
| Paul J. Weithman | Oxford University Press | July 12, 2002
This book argues that religious communities can contribute moral reasoning, civic participation, solidarity, and public-service commitments to democratic politics.
Moral Politics
| George Lakoff | University of Chicago Press | May 15, 2002
This book contrasts conservative moral models emphasizing parental authority and discipline with progressive models emphasizing empathy and nurturance.
Religion and Political Tolerance in America
| James L. Guth and colleagues | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | March 1997
This research examines how religious commitment, doctrinal conservatism, education, and perceptions of threat influence tolerance toward unpopular groups.
Voice and Equality
This book examines unequal political participation and identifies churches as important institutions for developing civic skills and mobilizing citizens.
Religion and Political Participation
This research shows how congregations provide civic skills, recruitment networks, leadership opportunities, and motivations for political participation.
Before the Shooting Begins
| James Davison Hunter | Free Press | April 6, 1994
This book examines how conflicts over abortion embody deeper disagreements about moral authority, religious truth, individual rights, and community obligations.
Culture Wars
| James Davison Hunter | Basic Books | December 2, 1991
This influential book describes American political conflict as a struggle between orthodox and progressive moral authorities over family, education, law, and public culture.
Moral Majority
| David Snowball | New York University Press | September 1, 1991
This book examines the organization, rhetoric, leadership, grassroots networks, and family-centered political agenda of the Moral Majority.
