Why Religion Matters: The Impact of Religious Practice on Social Stability
When policymakers consider America’s grave social problems, including violent crime and rising illegitimacy, substance abuse, and welfare dependency, they should heed the findings in the professional literature of the social sciences on the positive consequences that flow from the practice of religion.
- The strength of the family unit is intertwined with the practice of religion.
- Churchgoers are more likely to be married, less likely to be divorced or single, and more likely to manifest high levels of satisfaction in marriage.
- Church attendance is the most important predictor of marital stability and happiness.
- Religious belief and practice contribute substantially to the formation of personal moral criteria and sound moral judgment.
- Regular religious practice generally inoculates individuals against a host of social problems, including suicide, drug abuse, out-of-wedlock births, crime, and divorce.
- In repairing damage caused by alcoholism, drug addiction, and marital breakdown, religious belief and practice are a major source of strength and recovery.
- Regular practice of religion is good for personal physical health: It increases longevity, improves one’s chances of recovery from illness, and lessens the incidence of many killer diseases.
The overall impact of religious practice is illustrated dramatically in the three most comprehensive systematic reviews of the field.
- Some 81 percent of the studies showed the positive benefit of religious practice,
- 15 percent showed neutral effects,
- and only 4 percent showed harm, seen generally by most Americans of religious faith as a mispractice of religion.
The Protestant Reformation is a vivid example of how religious transformation could set in motion institutional changes leading to profound consequences for nation-wide economic and political development.
Martin Luther wanted all Christians to read the Bible because the Christian Scriptures [not the Pope] are the supreme authority in all matters of doctrine and practice. However, for Christians to be able to read the Bible, it was necessary to increase their literacy rate.
The higher educational attainments by Protestants has been proven to increase labor productivity and foster technological innovation and new knowledge creation.More educated individuals make better decisions about health, marriage, and parenting, are more goal-oriented, and less likely to engage in risky behavior. All of these behaviors could be linked with better economic outcomes. Protestant entrepreneurs are more likely to have a view that their duty is to add value to society through their work and that “their work is a calling from God…”
Protestants have higher levels of trust and are less willing to break the law… they are also more likely to honestly report misbehaviors of others…countries that were significantly influenced by Protestant missionaries have a significantly lower level of corruption…
Yuyu Chen and co-authors (2014) attribute part of China’s recent economic success to disseminations of Protestant social values by western missionaries. Protestant groups are more active than other religious groups in forming and supporting non-profit organizations. Protestant missionaries played an important role in fostering the growth of organizational civil society. Greater civil engagement leads to closer monitoring of the government and lower corruption, therefore, civil society has been linked to economic growth.
Where the Reformation took hold, the ruling elite evicted the Catholic Church from power, thus fundamentally altering the governance system of Europe. The role of democratic parliaments increased, there was a “revolution in legal thinking and economic innovations such as protecting private property rights and contracts.
The Reformation’s emphasis on family as an integral unit of a stable society and marriage as a permanent relationship between a man and a woman is in stark contrast to Renaissance women who were treated as sexual objects to be used then discarded or marital means of improving a man’s social and/or political alliances.
The Protestant attitude toward sexuality rested upon a larger system of beliefs about the family as a discrete unit, a “little commonwealth” ruled by its own patriarch, and mirroring the political unit of the state. Once wed, husbands and wives were encouraged to learn to love each other, a significant departure from an older ideal of extramarital and unrequited courtly love…” (D’Emilio and Freedman, 4) women could also be indispensable companions and helpmates (Tannahill, 327-328). The Reformation woman’s role and protected status in a family is inextricably bound up with female’s unique capacity to engage in the reproduction essential to maintaining a society and even human life itself.
Project 2025 seeks to impose a hierarchal, gendered, patriarchal vision of society. It is particularly focused
on enforcing a vision of the family that relies on fixed and narrowly defined gender roles and in undermining protections that enable women and LGBTQI+ people to thrive outside of a male-dominated, heterosexual family.
Thrive outside family? In contemporary society most working mothers return home to a second shift of unpaid housework and caregiving after their official workday ends. When paid work, household labor, and child care are combined, working mothers spend more time working than fathers.
The fact is, family life is hard and expensive, and anyone who has had to go it alone knows it is much better done IN a two-parent family. What this agency is demanding is taxpayer funding by the responsible members of society of the consequences of free sex with whomever, whenever by the irresponsible members of society.
The never-married elderly (aged 65 or older [men and women]) have the highest poverty rate among all groups followed by those who are divorced and widowed. The overall elderly poverty rate is almost two-thirds higher among women than men. Women who are widowed, divorced, and never married are significantly more likely than unmarried men to be poor.
I am not advocating women’s submission to domineering fathers and husbands. I personally refused to do so. More than once.
But I also took responsibility for myself and my children, to get out of, and learn from, bad situations to be a responsible and reliant parent and citizen. In my professional experience I totally understand that not everyone has the resources to accomplish what I have, and bemoan the failure of spiritual moral leadership, which cannot be replaced by political.
I worked for years with a population that lived off government support. However well-meaning this policy, it resulted in generational unemployment due to lack of education. The girls dropped out as soon as they got pregnant and could qualify for financial assistance and Section 8 housing and the males lived off the females and engaged in drug trafficking and other illegal means of making money.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has upgraded sexual abuse to sexual violence. It is a serious public health problem in the United States that profoundly impacts lifelong health, opportunity, and well-being.
One in 4 women and about 1 in 26 men have experienced completed or attempted rape, with women reporting they were first raped before age 25, and almost half of the men reporting they were first raped before age 18. About 1 in 9 men were forced to penetrate someone during his lifetime, with about 4 in 10 first made to penetrate as a minor.
National Institute for Health and Care Research reports that Adolescents are at higher risk of sexual assault than any other age group. Among teenagers who reported sexual assault, poor school attendance became more likely over the following year. Poor school attendance led to worse performance at school.
Adulthood sexual trauma is associated with long-term psychological consequences following short-term effects of shock, fear, anxiety, confusion, and withdrawal. Long-term outcomes include PTSD, depression, eating disorders, sexual dysfunction, alcohol and illicit drug use, nonfatal suicidal behavior and suicidal threats, physical symptoms in the absence of medical conditions, and severe preoccupations with physical appearances.
The perpetrator of sexual violence is usually someone the survivor knows, such as a friend, current or former intimate partner, coworker, neighbor, or family member. Sexual violence can occur in person, online, or through technology.
Then there’s the immoral effects on widespread poverty.
Don’t imagine that living in a democracy keeps Americans safe from exploitation by an elite group of the world’s most gifted secular-humanist leaders.
The top 1% of U.S. earners now hold more wealth than all of the entire middle class, defined as the middle 60% of the population, accounting for 77.5 million families in 2021. 
The status of the middle class in America has fallen to that of supporting the rise of the elite class.
We’re Living Through the Greatest Transfer of Wealth From the Middle Class to the Elites in History.
When historians look back on the decisions made beginning in March 2020 and still going strong, this period will be remembered as the “Great Consolidation”—the acceleration of a historic wealth transfer and power concentration out of the hands of the middle class and into those with political power and connections.
The “connected” form a powerful bloc comprised of big government, big business and big special interests. And though their monikers label them “big,” they are comprised of relatively small elites. And they are seeking to use their power to benefit themselves at your expense.
Prior to COVID, more than 30 million small businesses accounted for about half the GDP and jobs in America; the other half of the economy was concentrated in 20,000 big companies. Hundreds of thousands of small businesses were murdered in just a few short months – by government edict – while seven tech companies gained $3.4 trillion in market value. 2020 became a record year for IPOs and for other capital-raising vehicles like special purpose acquisition companies.
The one-two punch of government fiscal and Fed monetary policy continued to destroy the fabric of the economy for the average American. It dislocated the labor markets and the supply chain and it has ultimately led to inflation, which is making the basic cost of living much more expensive for Americans all across the country. In short, while your dollars today purchase fewer goods and services and your lives are more expensive and disrupted, those who are well-connected and asset-rich benefitted from outsized wealth increases driven by government policy.
The humanism race does not end in a win for mankind. Even the scattered survivors of an apocalypse will wipe each other out if left to their standard modus operandi.
That is what makes The Walking Dead so horrifyingly true to life. The zombies aren’t the greatest threat. It’s the other survivors.
Kingdom Come 