New Research: More Evangelicals Correlates with More Homicides

New research finds that, in counties across the United States, “increases in the evangelical adherent rate are directly associated with increases in homicide rates.”

When lead author Sam Stroope posted a thread about this research on social media, I literally caught my breath.

My first thought went to recalling some of Rick Pidcock’s columns in which he talks about how a theology of retributive justice undergirds evangelicalism, setting up a constant drumbeat of violence in their churches – a drumbeat that is echoed not only in the sermons but also in the music. How many of us were indoctrinated into lessons of spiritual warfare while marching into Vacation Bible School to the tune of Onward Christian Soldiers?

In Pidcock’s words: Evangelicals “believe in a heaven where Jesus will require everyone who didn’t bend the knee to evangelical theology on earth to be tortured for eternity…. If God’s will in heaven is to put these people to a violent death, then God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven would be a present embrace of hierarchy and violent death.”

That’s where my thoughts immediately went: Theology has consequences.

But let me tell you about this new research, which is more concrete.

In the forthcoming article, “Institutional Anomie, Religious Ecologies, and Violence in American Communities,” the authors look at how religious adherent rates relate to murder rates in counties across the United States. The article will be published in Social Forces and the pre-print is available for download here. Below is the abstract.

The authors, who include academic sociologists and criminologists, are Samuel Stroope, Rachel J. Bacon, Michael S. Barton, Elizabeth E. Brault, Rhiannon A. Kroeger, and Joseph O. Baker.

Their research considered the institution of religion as a cultural force in American life that could either restrain or facilitate crime. But instead of treating religion monolithically, they considered that “different types of religious communities may have differential relations with… the levels of violence.”

The type of religious institution, they theorized, could matter for determining whether religion would operate as a crime-controlling or crime-facilitating institution in local communities.

They concluded that, “as the U.S. continues to surpass peer nations as a leader in rates of homicide, its religious ecology appears to hold a part of the explanation.”

Using homicide data and religious data spanning four time periods between 1980 and 2010, their research focused on assessing the religious composition of local communities in relation to the patterns of homicide.

Here again is their stunning central finding:

“Increases in the evangelical adherent rate are directly associated with increases in homicide rates.”

That association is what the data showed.

By contrast, “mainline Protestant and Catholic adherent rates were inversely associated with county homicide rates.” In other words, they were associated with decreases in homicides.

The next question: Why?

Why does the data suggest that “evangelical religious culture is distinctly related to changes in levels of violence in communities?”

Integrating prior scholarship on institutional anomie, they theorize as to the reasons.

“Evangelicalism is a religious tradition that is relatively dominated by market logics of individualism and competition, emphasizing the individual’s responsibility for success (or failure) and de-emphasizing the role of structural conditions, social contexts, and social policies. Evangelicalism also tends to prioritize church growth, individual piety, group boundaries, and within-group ties over bridging ties, broad-based community institutions, and social programs.”

“Compared with evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics have higher levels of participation in voluntary associations focused on social services, such as building diverse community ties and addressing social needs in communities.”

Evangelicals “are the inheritors of a religious tradition that discouraged… institutional engagement in favor of evangelism and an emphasis on individual morality rather than social reform or social service. These emphases, while potentially beneficial for individuals enmeshed in the group itself, can also be exclusive, weakening social integration in the broader community.”

“The pervasiveness of an individualistic form of free enterprise thinking among evangelicals and the concentration of morality and social change at the individual level… applies not only to evangelical ministry philosophy, but also to how evangelicals think about solutions to broader social issues. Relatedly, evangelicals tend to subscribe to ‘anti-structuralism,’ leaving ‘the existing larger structures of business and the economy largely unquestioned…. Material need or community problems are seen as a result of the failure of individuals to embrace evangelical faith, live moral lives, and be industrious in a competitive market economy. Consequently, evangelical ministry efforts tend to be aligned with an American Dream ideology and downplay social programs, leaving local communities more exposed to the capriciousness of the market and its attendant criminogenic pressures.”

This isn’t the same as what Rick Pidcock was saying with “theology has consequences,” but I think it aligns.

The authors acknowledge that they “cannot eliminate other possible explanatory frameworks,” and they outline why some other possibilities are not supported.

But whatever the answer to the “Why” question may be, the data stands: Increased numbers of evangelicals correlate with increased rates of homicide.

I’m hoping we’ll see further research on this in the future. And I’m already wondering if there could also be a correlation between increases in evangelical adherents and increases in domestic violence crime reports.

This research flat-out floored me, and I’d be curious to know what some of you think about it.

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