America’s Blessings
Rodney Stark, rising in the ranks of my favorite authors, wrote The Rise of Christianity. I had a few Daily Droplets from that book last year. This year, Rachel gave me his newest book (2012) for Christmas – America’s Blessings: How Religion Benefits Everyone, Including Atheists. Dr. Stark teaches sociology and comparative religion at Baylor University, a Baptist institution. I do not know Stark’s religious or spiritual views but he takes the left to task for their dishonesty relative to the importance and impact of religion in our country.
Take, for example, Christianity (and to a lesser extent, Judaism) and its influence on prosocial behavior. Over a period of 60+ years, some 247 research studies have found a positive impact of religion in reducing crime.
The left wants to harp on our crime rate being so high and thus, among other things, they want to limit our Second Amendment rights. One reason why our crime rates were so “high” is that other countries did not even publish official rates for years! But according to a table printed on page 40, comparing the U. S. with Western European countries, we were eighth on the list for burglaries, seventh for thefts, and tenth for assaults.
Our homicide rate is far higher, at 5.1 per 100,000 people, but when you factor out homicide rates among the black population, the rate falls to 3.1, much closer to the European rate.
But the question Stark answers in this book is – Does religion play an important factor in deterring crime? Based on 9,000 cases of people picked up by police, twenty-five percent were not religious, by far more likely than Protestants (10%) or Catholics (11%). Those who do not attend worship at all were four times more likely to be picked up than those who attended weekly. These results are the same across educational lines and income lines. Weekly attenders are much less likely to try cocaine or inject drugs.
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Religion – i. e., Christianity – has a positive impact on social behavior as well. Dr. Stark presents the results of research showing religious Americans are more likely to wear seat belts, stand during the National Anthem, use garbage cans, and teens are more likely to attend school as they should.
None of this is any surprise to you, is it? It only makes sense that people who claim to follow Jesus would be law abiding citizens. “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment” (Romans 12:1-2).
Rather than marginalizing the Christian community – or denigrating us as “clinging to guns and religion” – if our politicians were smart, they would encourage church membership! Like our Founding Fathers did.
Dr. Stark estimates that if we were totally secularized as a nation – it would cost taxpayers an additional $2.1 trillion per year in law-enforcement and other services.
Jesus – through His followers – is a blessing to the United States of America. More results from Stark’s book, America’s Blessings, over the next several weeks.
–Paul Holland
