I’ve spent the entirety of my life spread throughout Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, with Christianity a central fixture in day-to-day life in each of the communities I have lived. From my understanding of Christianity, love is central; we should love and care for our neighbors, whether they look like us or not. What I’ve noticed, however, is that people who identify as Christian don’t seem to act much differently than those who are atheist or agnostic. I explored this proposition empirically, using nationally representative data from the General Social Survey (GSS) to see specifically how Protestants compared to people who identified as non-religious.
Examining relationships, Protestants are more likely to be married than the non-religious, but are also more likely to report having been divorced or separated. For those who are married, there are no significant differences in relationship satisfaction between the two groups. Although Protestants are more likely to hold the attitude that having sex with someone other than your spouse is always wrong, there are no significant differences between them and non-believers in actually acknowledging having sex with someone other than their spouse.
Christianity emphasizes service to others, and Jesus gave special attention to the marginalized and the oppressed. With the GSS, we can gain a bit of insight into how Protestants and non-believers respond to marginalized groups including racial minorities, the poor, immigrants, and women, and findings are surprising. A few examples: Protestants were more likely than non-believers to say we were spending too much money on things like improving the conditions of black people and providing assistance and welfare to the poor. Protestants are much more likely than non-believers to feel as though whites are harmed by affirmative action and that blacks should overcome prejudice to work their way up without special favors compared to non-believers. Protestants also hold more negative views towards immigrants than do the non-religious, being more likely to respond that immigrants increase crime rates and take jobs away from Americans. Lastly, Protestants are more likely to hold more traditional views of women, with a greater percentage seeing men as better suited for politics than women and being more likely to agree it’s better for everyone if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family.
And, although forgiveness is central to Christianity, Protestants believe in a more punitive approach to infractions by both adults and children; Protestants are more likely than non-believers to say that courts do not deal with criminals harshly enough, while also being more accepting of spanking as a form of punishment for children. And, although Protestants more commonly express opposition to abortion, they are simultaneously much more likely to favor capital punishment in the case of murder than are non-religious people.
So, why do non-believers seem to hold more pro-Christian attitudes than do Protestants? It is possible that structured differences between Protestants and the non-believers across other variables (like education) are driving these findings, but it is intriguing regardless.