Guilt, religion, and politics

As far as I can tell, I am the only person who has ever noted the correlation between the age of a religion and the tendency of its followers to be liberals.

Let's look at the four major U.S. religions practiced by people of European descent. Ordered by age with oldest first:

(1) Judaism
(2) Catholicism
(3) Protestantism
(4) Mormonism

Now let's order these religions with the tendency of its followers to be liberal and vote for Democrats. Ordered by most heavily liberal first:

(1) Judaism
(2) Catholicism
(3) Protestantism
(4) Mormonism

Notice that it's the exact same order.

Just a coincidence? I think not. There's a connection, and the connection is guilt. It's guilt which motivates liberals, and it's also no coincidence that Jews feel the most guilt. To make this post shorter, I recommend reading G. Andrew Duthie's post on liberal guilt. And then read Jewish Atheist's post on Jewish guilt.

Jewish Atheist's post is especially interesting because it explains how Jewish parents use guilt to ensure that their children marry within the religion and remain Jewish. I was raised Jewish myself, so I completely concur with the assessment that guilt is an integral part of the Jewish identity (though not part of the identity that I wish to be a part of). When I was little and I asked my father why we couldn't eat bread during Passover (or why we had to comply with any of the other seemingly infinite number of Jewish laws), his response was "GUILT! It's GUILT!"

If we hypothesize that predisposition towards feeling guilty is a genetically inherited trait, then it's clear why Jewish people are so wracked with guilt. Those Jews who didn't respond to parental guilt trips were more likely to abandon the religion and so the non-guilty genes were culled from the Jewish gene pool. And because Judaism is non-evangelical religion, there are no new members brought in from the outside. Jewish people are only born into the religion, and because those less prone to guilt compose a disproportionate share of those who leave, with each generation the average Jew becomes more predisposed towards feelings of guilt.

We have now solved the mystery that has befuddled political scientists. Normally there is a correlation between wealth and being conservative, so why are Jews overwhelmingly liberal despite being financially successful? Because of Jewish predisposition towards feeling guilty, which manifests as a liberal political orientaiton.

Jews aren't alone in using guilt to keep their children from changing faiths, which explains why Protestants are less predisposed to guilt than Catholics, and Mormons are less so than Protestants. New religions gain followers by converting the less guilt-prone followers of older religions.

RELATED POSTS

Still don't believe that political views are related to genes? In my previous post, Politics and Genes, there's a link to an article in the New York Times about this very topic! Per the NY Times article, "a team of political scientists is arguing that people's gut-level reaction to issues like the death penalty, taxes and abortion is strongly influenced by genetic inheritance."

Additional posts:

Are "guilt" and "caring" different feelings?
A liberal writes an essay about his guilt
Googling guilt and religion

MAYBE THIS THEORY IS WRONG?

Maybe Jews aren't leftist after all? Jewish people are proud of our armed forces.

Comments

[SciFiGeek]

You're probably onto something, though I don't know if I'd put it exactly that way. Have you read Rodney Stark's (I think that's the guy) stuff on how religions get more liberal over time and new, strict ones arise to pick up the people who find the old ones too watered-down. (this goes back a long way--remember Jesus and the 'whited sepulchers').

Jewish liberalism is pretty easy to explain. Urbanism, for one. Fear of established Christianity, for two. That German conservative with the mustache, for three.

[Lurker]

"are no new members brought in from the outside" - Some do convert to Judaism, some marry in.

[The Superflous Man]

But:
87% of Orthodox Jews voted for Bush in 2004, according to a book review in The Economist. I don't know if they are any more 'capitalist' than their nonobservant brethren. They may be voting so for the social conservatism and supposedly more pro-Israel position. You would have to check the Orthodox voting in decades past, where there was little difference in social conservatism between candidates.

And, Sepharadim in Israel vote more hawkishly.

A collectivist mind set would have a effect similar to guilt.

[Hoser]

Have you ever wondered if 'guilt' is a symptom of somebody ACTUALLY caring about another person so much that they start to feel it?

hmm...based on that and your arguement above, that would mean somebody from a religion like Judaism which experiences a lot of guilt, also cares deeply for their fellow man/woman....and these people vote towards a 'liberal' political view.

QFD: those that don't...don't care.

All that non-liberal, religious stuff claims to care about their 'fellow man' until it doesn't sit right for their situation...in essence becoming ignorant of the teachings they claim to love and follow so much!

[The Superfluous Man]

Hoser,
Among those who don't believe in income redistribution, there are two beliefs:
1. Caring for others, while good and nice, is not a moral obligation.
2. Caring for others is a moral obligation, but it is wrong for the government to enforce such obligations. Instead, people should give voluntarily.

[mickslam]

You are conflating what other people believe with what you believe.

It doens't matter why someone else is a Democrat or Republican. It matters what you believe and which party best reflects those beliefs.

So then Republicans are ruled by:

a. Fear
b. Greed
c. Hate
d. All of the above

[Noumenon]

I guarantee this correlation will break down if you try to extend it to Hinduism or Islam or Europe or Australia.

You don't know anything about the genetic cause of "guiltiness" or about the genetic relatedness of Catholics.

This whole "guilty" idea is, as mickslam is saying, just analogous to someone being convinced by all kinds of conservative and libertarian logical arguments and then saying, "But I could never be a conservative. They're so greedy!"

I don't even know where to start with opposing this idea. It reminds me of Democratic attempts to explain Christian anti-abortion motivations as coming out of some deep hatred for sex. Basically it has no chance at successfully describing the actual components of liberalism, and it is couched in loaded terms right from the start. It's not going to be productive.

[The Engineer]

It's guilt, not altruism, and I can prove it.

Libs care about "doing something". But they don't give a rat's ass about the efficacy of the programs that they advocate.

Liberalism is all about making yourself feel better by showing that you care. But no liberal has ever gone back and done a post-mortem to see how well these programs work.

The pure genius of "compassionate conservatism" was the argument that programs that supposedly help people SHOULD ACTUALLY HELP. This was manifested by the testing requirements in No Child Left Behind.

Call me crazy, but the thing libs hate most about NCLB is the testing requirements.

[Half Sigma]

Liberals don't like standardized tests because it lowers the self esteem of the kids who score low.

Or because certain minorities consistently score low, and they prefer to blame the test rather than seek other explanations.