No Political Secularization Without Representation: Examining the Influence of Modernization on Individual Belief and Its Relationship with Government Attitudes Towards Organized Religion

Publication Date

Spring 2025

Presentation Length

15 minutes

College

College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences

Department

Political Science, Department of

Student Level

Undergraduate

SPARK Category

Research

Faculty Advisor

Dr. Nathan Griffith

Presentation Type

Talk/Oral

Summary

How does modernization’s impact on a population’s beliefs affect their government’s attitude and policies toward organized religions? While current literature agrees that modernization within any nation seems to have a direct correlation with the number of religious practitioners within their country, there is currently no consensus as to whether modernity promotes secularization or desecularization among their respective populations nor has it identified the government’s reaction to these changes. The purpose of this study is to determine if the development of individual belief among citizens living within various nations influences the attitudes their government has taken to either favor or disfavor religion over the past 40 years. This will be accomplished through a comparison analysis between data collected by the World Values Survey on individual beliefs and the Government Religious Preference dataset (GRP). I expect to find that countries whose populations have secularized over the past 40 years are more likely to adopt tolerant religious policies, score lower on the GRP, and move away from favoring any religious practice, whereas countries, where their populations have desecularized, will likely have adopted more conservative religious policies, score higher on the GRP, and have moved towards favoring one religion while disfavoring others.

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