FOREWORD
1. See Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Public Affairs, “America’s Wars,” accessed January 7, 2022, https://www.va.gov/opa/publications/factsheets/fs_americas_wars.pdf.
2. The notable exception to this pattern is the small but growing group of Hispanic Protestants who consistently lean Republican.
INTRODUCTION
1. In an unexpected twist, the Biden administration mandated an investigation of whether COVID-19 was made in the Wuhan lab (Harris and Abutaleb 2021). Regardless of the results of that review, it is important to remember that, “throughout much of the pandemic, the ‘lab leak’ hypothesis has been ridiculed by scientists as a baseless conspiracy theory, fueled by President Donald Trump in an effort to deflect attention from his administration’s botched pandemic response” (Harris and Abutaleb 2021). That is, there was no public evidence at the time of the surveying in 2020, and it was widely acknowledged as a conspiracy theory.
CHAPTER 1
1. Portions of this article have been reprinted with permission by Cambridge University Press. It was originally published as Paul A. Djupe and Ryan P. Burge, “The Prosperity Gospel of Coronavirus Response,” Politics and Religion 14, no. 3 (2020): 552–573, https://doi.org/10.1017/S175504832000053X. Reproduced with permission. We offer the epigraph as an explanation for the chapter title, which was chosen because it highlights so perfectly the idea that COVID-19 is linked to supernatural forces and the power of religious belief is a sufficient prophylactic.
2. Please see the online appendix for this chapter for an overview of religious belief work that had to be omitted due to space constraints.
3. For about one-third of the sample, there was also a quota for a Hispanic identity. The final returns were very close to the U.S. Census quotas, only missing by a percentage point or two.
4. In an earlier formulation, the question text was not specific enough about when and where blessings would flow from belief. For instance, we had asked, “Our efforts and our sacrifices to God will be richly rewarded.” In this survey we asked, “Our efforts and our sacrifices to God will be richly rewarded in this life” (emphasis added). We formerly asked, “God will give you what you seek if you give to Him and have faith,” but now ask, “God will give you the material things you seek if you give to Him and have faith” (emphasis added).
5. The estimate varies with question wording capturing the general concept of the end times. For instance, a 2012 PRRI question asked whether “[T]he end of the world, as predicted in the Book of Revelation, will happen in your lifetime,” to which 13 percent agreed. It was only a bit lower from the figure reported by David Barker and David Bearce (2012), who report that 56 percent of Americans believe “in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ—that is, that Jesus will return to Earth someday.” It is clearly close to Pew’s finding in 2010 that 41 percent believe that by 2050 it is probable or definite that “Jesus Christ will return.” It is not clear what exactly generates the variation in response, but the variation does seem to suggest that events heighten agreement in imminent events.
6. The models (coefficients and fit statistics are available in appendix Table A1) also include religious tradition dummies, worship attendance, race, age, gender, and education (the appendix also contains full variable coding). We also decided to square the Prosperity Gospel measure, which allows for nonlinear relationships to emerge. It is important to note that this does not change the estimated effect size; it merely allows for different shapes of the slope to emerge (and it could return a linear slope).
7. In the appendix for this chapter, we have a discussion and present results of an analysis of how the Prosperity Gospel index performs in the context of many other religious measures.
8. The racial composition of the parties looks quite different across the distribution of Prosperity Gospel beliefs—Republicans are uniformly white, but independents and especially Democratic believers are far more likely to be racial minorities (50 percent in the case of Democrats).
CHAPTER 2
1. It is worth noting that more scientific knowledge does not necessarily result in higher acceptance of scientific results and instead may cause the opposite (Landrum and Olshansky 2019). People tend to deny results and use science to confirm their prior beliefs (Lewandowsky, Oberauer, and Gignac 2013).
2. Scholars of conspiracy theories summarize conspiracy thinking as “a political worldview consisting of general feelings of distrust or paranoia toward government services and institutions, feelings of political powerlessness and cynicism, and a general defiance of authority” (Landrum and Oshanky 2019, 194). By contrast, scholars cannot agree on a common definition of religion. Hogg, Adelman, and Blagg (2010, 73) define religion as “a group phenomenon involving group norms that specify beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors relating to both sacred and secular aspects of life. . . . Religious groups differ from other groups in one fundamental way—they invoke the sacred and the divine to render existence meaningful.”
3. All interviews were conducted among participants in AmeriSpeak, a probability-based panel designed to be representative of the national U.S. adult population run by NORC at the University of Chicago.
4. This is the only measure related to COVID-19 conspiracy theories in the survey. We recognize the controversy surrounding the idea that the coronavirus was developed in a lab, but as the origins of the virus have not been confirmed, this measure remains in the realm of conspiracy theories.
5. To conduct our statistical analyses, we recoded our dependent variable into 1 and 0. The 0 category, which denotes “the coronavirus developed naturally,” includes those who “don’t know” or skipped the question due to the very low numbers of cases (18). The inclusion or exclusion of these individuals does not change the results.
6. For example, magical thinking can be present among evangelical Christians who believe in the prosperity gospel. In this chapter, we argue that magical thinking is a cognitive style that is part of the religious thinking of any religion (e.g., belief in a perceived higher power) and it is not only particular to evangelicals.
7. Model 1 in the appendix. Differences in mean predicted probabilities are statistically significant at p < 0.05. Evangelical and nonevangelical Protestants are more likely than religiously unaffiliated Americans to believe that COVID-19 is lab made, while there are not statistically significantly differences between those who identify as Catholic, as other Christian (Mormon and Orthodox), or with other religions (Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu) from religiously unaffiliated Americans.
CHAPTER 3
1. These statistics represent the number of firearm background checks initiated through the National Instant Criminal Background Check system. These numbers “do not perfectly represent the number of firearms sold” (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2020). Miller, Hepburn, and Azrael (2017) estimated that approximately 20 percent of gun owners reported obtaining their most recent firearm within the previous two years without a background check. It is likely, therefore, that these numbers are underestimates.
CHAPTER 5
1. The usage of “U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study” instead of “Tuskegee Experiment” or “Tuskegee Study” is intentional. The often cited “Tuskegee Experiment” places the emphasis on Tuskegee University (a historically Black college/university) and the city of Tuskegee (a historically Black city) regarding the immoral and unethical syphilis experiment. This framing and language deemphasize the role of the U.S. federal government. We honor, recognize, and respond to the way language shapes our ideas about truth in history, ethics, and institutional memory.
CHAPTER 7
1. This chapter has been adapted and expanded from a presentation at the International Conference on Covid-19 Pandemic and Religious Freedom: Reports from North America and Europe, sponsored by Andrews University, the BYU Law School Center for Law and Religion Studies, and the University of Portsmouth, December 2–3, 2020. Portions of Chapter 7 previously appeared as “The Coronavirus Pandemic and Restrictions on Churches: Evaluating the Christian Legal Movement’s Role in Polarizing Religious Freedom,” in Fides et Libertas, special edition “COVID-19 and Religious Liberty,” 2021. Used with permission.
2. In March 2020, the alpha was 0.61, and the eigenvalue was 1.17. In October 2020, the alpha was 0.60, and the eigenvalue was 1.31.
3. For a similar argument about the effects of polarization of reactions to the Supreme Court case dealing with New York’s restrictions, see Asma T. Uddin and Andrew Lewis’s (2020) USA Today op-ed.
CHAPTER 8
1. Indeed, the Court’s majority has pointedly located COVID-19 restrictions within the ambit of the Sherbert test. See Reinbold 2021.
2. Agudath Israel of America et al. v. Andrew Cuomo 2020.
3. Agudath Israel of America et al. v. Andrew Cuomo 2020.
4. Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Andrew Cuomo 2020.
5. Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Andrew Cuomo 2020.
6. Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Andrew Cuomo 2020.
7. Cavalry Chapel Dayton Valley v. Steve Sisolak 2020.
8. Cavalry Chapel Dayton Valley v. Steve Sisolak 2020.
9. Pope Francis 2020.
10. Our Sunday Visitor 2020.
11. United States v. Ballard 322 U.S. 78 (1944).
12. United States v. Ballard 322 U.S. 78 (1944).
13. Reagan 1980; Romney 2007.
14. Cox and Jones 2017b.
15. South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Gavin Newsom 2020.
16. Calvary Chapel v. Sisolak 2020.
17. Alito 2020.
18. Tyler & Bursch, LLP 2020.
19. K. Jones 2020.
20. Calvary Chapel v. Sisolak 2020.
21. Roman Catholic Diocese v. Cuomo 2020.
22. There is every reason to believe that this tendency to defer to religious claimants on the question of whether they are being substantially burdened will increase in coming cases. See Reinbold 2020.
23. See, for example, R. Jones 2016.
24. See, for example, Bennett 2017; FitzGerald 2017.
25. See, for example, Lewis 2017; Reinbold 2018.
26. See, for example, Feldman 2005; Jay Wexler 2019.
27. Cavalry Chapel Dayton Valley v. Steve Sisolak 2020; Roman Catholic Diocese v. Cuomo 2020.
CHAPTER 11
Acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank Paul A. Djupe and Jamil S. Scott for their advice and comments and Paul A. Djupe, Ryan P. Burge, and Andrew R. Lewis for sharing data.
1. While a direct measure of clergywomen within a congregation would be the closest equivalent to women in executive leadership positions in the political realm (e.g., mayors, governors, presidents), a broader measure of “women’s leadership” was the closest available measure in the Djupe, Burge, and Lewis (2020) survey. Additionally, in a religious context, there are leadership roles aside from clergy (e.g., deacon) that have similar visibility and functional roles as women legislators. Moreover, using a broader measure of women’s leadership allows us to examine the role of women’s leadership and COVID-19 responses in more congregations than if we only examined congregations that allow women to serve in the head leadership role. Denominations differ in whether they allow women to serve as clergy (Chaves 1999), but even in denominations that formally allow women to serve as the head pastor or priest, clergymen vastly outnumber clergywomen in America’s places of worship. Of Americans who attend worship services, only 9 percent report attending a congregation led by a clergywoman (Knoll and Bolin 2018). In the Djupe, Burge, and Lewis (2020) survey, respondents across religious traditions report similar levels of seeing women lead within their congregations (see the online appendix for more information).
2. See the online appendix for tables containing variable descriptions and measures.
3. The correlation coefficients between whether a respondent had seen women leading and their church attendance, church size, whether they considered themselves to be born-again Christians, and the degree to which they identified as biblical literalists ranges from 0.19 to 0.29.
4. We also estimated logit models. The key coefficients in these models are in the same direction as the key coefficients estimated using linear probability models and have very similar levels of statistical significance.
5. Because there is likely to be a negative relationship between not reporting a religious affiliation and church attendance, responses to the question about in-person services being canceled from individuals who identified as having no religion may be suspect (e.g., perhaps respondents guessed). We therefore estimated this model excluding individuals who reported not having a religion, but the coefficient on having seen women leading in a religious setting remained statistically significant and nearly identical in magnitude.
CHAPTER 13
1. We conducted a nationally representative survey of 1,049 adults, eighteen to twenty-four years old via a Qualtrics online panel during May 19–28, 2020, after shelter-in-place measures were imposed by most U.S. states. While participants in the survey were volunteers (i.e., not a random sample), we constructed the sample to be representative of Gen Z on several metrics (gender, race, socioeconomic status). The data are weighted accordingly. Given our sample size and the corresponding population metrics, we did not have enough respondents to draw reasonable inferences about smaller racial/ethnic groups.
2. In this case, we combine respondents who said they are atheists (7.8 percent), agnostic (7.04 percent), or nothing in particular (24.3 percent) into the religiously unaffiliated category.
3. We first asked survey respondents whether they identified as Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, Orthodox Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, agnostic, nothing in particular, or “something else,” with the option in the last category to write in their own answers. Given that white respondents make up a larger percentage of the sample, those who answered that they were Protestant or said they were Christian in the something else category were asked whether they identified themselves as an evangelical or born-again Christian. We classified those respondents who said yes on the latter question as white evangelical Protestants; we classified those who said no as white mainline Protestants.
4. PRRI’s 2019 American Values Survey found that 7 percent of Gen Z Americans are white evangelical Protestant, compared with the 5 percent we found in our 2020 survey. Mormons made up 2 percent of PRRI’s survey compared with 5 percent in our analysis. Finally, PRRI found that 1 percent of their respondents are Black Catholics, compared with 3 percent in our sample; we have similar measures of Black Protestants in both surveys. Thanks to Natalie Jackson, PRRI’s research director, for compiling those numbers for us.
5. The ideological 7-point scale runs from 1 (extremely liberal) to 7 (extremely conservative), with 4 indicating moderate.
6. To interpret more easily the predicted probabilities, we collapsed the ideology measure into three values: liberal, moderate, and conservative.
7. For brevity, we only present and discuss the results for the highest outcome of religious faith—whether a respondent’s faith has gotten stronger during COVID. However, the results are similar for the other outcomes of the measure (weakened faith or faith has stayed the same) and are available from the authors upon request.
CHAPTER 14
1. During the analyses, we looked to see if evangelical or born-again Protestants expressed different attitudes; the results are largely the same.
2. See the Trump Twitter Archive for specific tweets: http://www.trumptwitterarchive.com/archive.
CHAPTER 15
1. Order of authorship is alphabetical to denote equal contribution. Direct correspondence to Kraig Beyerlein, University of Notre Dame, Department of Sociology, 4044 Jenkins and Nanovic Halls, Notre Dame, IN 46556.
2. The University of Chicago Divinity School and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research funded this module.
3. Because information about denominations was not collected as part of the survey, we used race of respondent and self-identification as a “born-again or evangelical Christian” to distinguish among Black, evangelical, and mainline Protestants (Smith et al. 2018).
4. For excellent research assistance for this part of the project, we thank Ella Wisniewski.
5. Twenty states revised their executive orders about religious regulations between the date of their initial enactment in late March and the fielding of our survey. In those cases, we coded the version closest to the date of our survey.
6. Also excluded are respondents who said they typically do not attend a congregation when asked about whether their congregation had closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
7. A survey fielded about a month prior to the one we analyze found that evangelical Protestants were more likely than non-evangelicals to continue in-person religious activity, as well as explicitly support defiance of government restrictions, in states that prohibited religious gatherings or had no restrictions at that time (Djupe 2020).
CHAPTER 16
1. This includes 21.7 percent of Latter-Day Saints, 41.5 percent of Orthodox Christians, 20 percent of Muslims, 26.7 percent of Buddhists, and 10.3 percent of Hindus.
2. This finding is similar to Perry et al. (2020) who found that Christian nationalism—an attitudinal blend of (1) a conception of Americans as God’s chosen and protected people, (2) distrust of the news media, and (3) allegiance to President Donald Trump—was the strongest predictor of disregarding recommendations from public health officials when it came to social distancing, washing hands, wearing a mask, and so on. The key difference in our current analysis is that communication from religious and political elites played a key factor in religious behavior during the pandemic while Perry et al. focus on the effect of preexisting political and societal attitudes.
CONCLUSION
1. Johns Hopkins University and Medicine, Coronavirus Resource Center, “COVID-19 Dashboard,” last updated June 10, 2022, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html.
2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “COVID-19 Vaccinations in the United States,” COVID Data Tracker, last updated June 10, 2022, https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-total-admin-rate-total.