Demagogue

Even as they agitate against same-sex marriage, abortion rights, teaching about evolution, and a host of other things, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and Jerry Falwell claim their goal is bringing people "to the Lord."

Frankly, I think they're political activists who simply use the Bible as a prop, but, assuming they really want to fill America's churches to capacity, I wonder if they read this study. I seriously doubt it, but, if not, they should.

The study was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research at a time (last October) when the trio were busy rallying their minions to re-elect George W. Bush. In the study, Harvard professors Edward Glaeser, Giacomo Ponzetto and Jesse Shapiro noted that "[a]ttending church is a better predictor of supporting George Bush than is being rich."

No great shock there, but the NBER study also makes this interesting observation:

... religious determinants of political orientation will be maximized when about 50 percent of the population attends church regularly ...

... We find a strong non-monotonic relationship across countries between church attendance at the national level and the extent to which religion determines right-wing orientation. In countries with very low levels of church attendance, such as Norway or Russia, religion is uncorrelated with political preferences.

The same is true in those countries, like the Philipppines, with very high levels of religious attendance.

The countries with very strong connections between religion and being right-wing are all those, like the United States, where about one-half of the population attends church once per month or more.