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Would Jesus Vote Republican or Democrat · Abide Meditation App

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  Speaker 1: Would Jesus vote Republican or Democrat? How you answer that
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  Speaker 1: question almost certainly depends on your own political ideology. Now,
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  Speaker 1: historically it's an impossible question to answer. First, Pinning down
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  Speaker 1: what Jesus actually said is one of the enduring challenges
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  Speaker 1: of New Testament scholarship. The Gospels were written decades after
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  Speaker 1: the death of Jesus, and scholars are constantly debating which
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  Speaker 1: sayings we can trace back to Jesus himself and which
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  Speaker 1: ones were changed by later editors. If it's so hard
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  Speaker 1: to figure out his authentic sayings, just imagine how much
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  Speaker 1: more difficult it would be to figure out his views
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  Speaker 1: on modern political issues. Moreover, Jesus lived in a dramatically
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  Speaker 1: different political and economic context, the ancient Roman Empire, So
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  Speaker 1: even when he does seem to make statements that we
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  Speaker 1: might interpret as political commentary, like rendering taxes unto Caesar,
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  Speaker 1: it'd be simplistic at best and inaccurate at worst to
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  Speaker 1: make a direct comparison to today, considering the very different
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  Speaker 1: political contexts. But what did you think when I asked
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  Speaker 1: that question? A team of sociologists recently found that one
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  Speaker 1: of the strongest predictors of where Americans locate Jesus ideologically,
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  Speaker 1: is there own ideological identity? The researchers asked Americans on
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  Speaker 1: a scale from one to ten, where would you place
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  Speaker 1: Jesus on an ideological spectrum, one being extremely left wing
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  Speaker 1: and ten being extremely right wing? And here's what they found.
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  Speaker 1: The dark bar here represents all Americans, but the researchers
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  Speaker 1: also broke out Christians and non Christians in the study
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  Speaker 1: to see if religious filiation plays a role in these ratings.
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  Speaker 1: At all, Christians are here and white and non Christians
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  Speaker 1: in gray. Right away, you'll notice that big spike in
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  Speaker 1: the middle. Over forty percent of all Americans think that
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  Speaker 1: Jesus is a centrist, with around twenty five percent of
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  Speaker 1: Americans placing him slightly left of center at a five
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  Speaker 1: and just over fifteen percent putting him at slightly right
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  Speaker 1: of center at a six. This spike can also be
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  Speaker 1: seen if we focus only on Christians and non Christians
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  Speaker 1: as well, though Christians are twice as likely as non
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  Speaker 1: Christians to say Jesus as extremely right wing and non
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  Speaker 1: Christians are more likely to rate him as left wing.
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  Speaker 1: But the raw numbers don't tell the whole story. Digging
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  Speaker 1: into the results, they've found something surprising. Quoting one of
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  Speaker 1: the researchers, the sociologist Samuel Perry, theading are almost all
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  Speaker 1: about politics and almost nothing to do with being religious
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  Speaker 1: or even Christian. The sociologists not only measured the respondent's
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  Speaker 1: religious identity, but they also measured their religiosity, things like
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  Speaker 1: how often they attend religious services, how often they pray,
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  Speaker 1: how important is religion to them personally, And they found
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  Speaker 1: that both of these characteristics, a person's religious affiliation and
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  Speaker 1: their level of religiosity had little to do with how
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  Speaker 1: that person rated Jesus On the right left spectrum when
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  Speaker 1: it comes to affiliation, they found the ratings of Christians
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  Speaker 1: and non Christians do not appear statistically distinguishable when accounting
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  Speaker 1: for shared political ideology. In other words, left leaning Christians
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  Speaker 1: and left leaning non Christians rated him the same, and
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  Speaker 1: on the flip side, right leading Christians and right leaning
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  Speaker 1: non Christians rated him the same. The political ideology is
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  Speaker 1: the common denominator, not religious affiliation. Religiosity also had very
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  Speaker 1: little effect. It doesn't matter if you're Christian that goes
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  Speaker 1: to church all the time or never, doesn't matter if
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  Speaker 1: they're highly committed to Christianity. Or not. If an American
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  Speaker 1: Christian is very conservative, they'll rate Jesus as very conservative
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  Speaker 1: regardless of their own commitment, and vice versa. For liberal Christians, again,
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  Speaker 1: political ideology is the common denominator and not one's level
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  Speaker 1: of religiosity. These conclusions mirror what other sociologists have called projection.
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  Speaker 1: People project their values onto their gods and onto Jesus,
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  Speaker 1: in particular in the US. For example, a study from
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  Speaker 1: twenty eleven showed that American Christians, both on the left
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  Speaker 1: and right, tend to believe that Jesus Christ holds the
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  Speaker 1: same policy preferences that they hold. They asked a sampling
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  Speaker 1: of American Christians how they would rate his support for
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  Speaker 1: a variety of political issues, gay marriage, taxation on the wealthy,
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  Speaker 1: or access to abortion. The researchers had them rate his
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  Speaker 1: views on a scale from one to one hundred, one
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  Speaker 1: being he holds an extremely liberal position on the issue
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  Speaker 1: and one hundred and extremely conservative view on the issue.
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  Speaker 1: Here are the results for taxation on the wealthy. The
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  Speaker 1: darker bar represents how respondents characterize their own beliefs, and
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  Speaker 1: the gray bar how they characterize the beliefs of Jesus. Remember,
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  Speaker 1: a higher bar indicates a more conservative opinion, So in
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  Speaker 1: this case, liberals think Jesus is lower on the scale
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  Speaker 1: and would hold an extremely liberal position on the issue.
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  Speaker 1: Conservatives think he would hold a more conservative opinion. Interestingly,
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  Speaker 1: when it comes to this question, both liberals and conservatives
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  Speaker 1: assumed Jesus would be slightly more liberal than themselves, but
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  Speaker 1: at the same time, both sides assumed that he would
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  Speaker 1: generally align with their own respective side. For other issues,
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  Speaker 1: like banning gay marriage, both liberals and conservatives assume that
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  Speaker 1: Jesus would be slightly more conservative, but again both sides
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  Speaker 1: still assume that Jesus would generally agree with them. The
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  Speaker 1: researchers concluded that American Christians project their own views of
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  Speaker 1: specific political issues onto those of Jesus, and they went
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  Speaker 1: on to argue that people make these projections in an
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  Speaker 1: effort to reduce cognitive dissonance, the psychological discomfort that we
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  Speaker 1: feel when holding multiple conflicting opinions at the same time.
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  Speaker 1: In other words, the notion that Jesus might not agree
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  Speaker 1: with your politics causes so much discomfort that you reduce
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  Speaker 1: that discomfort by projecting your values onto him. Oh, Jesus
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  Speaker 1: would definitely agree with my tax policy no worries this
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  Speaker 1: corrob It's another study that found that Americans tend to
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  Speaker 1: be more ego centric when estimating God's beliefs about a
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  Speaker 1: political issue when compared to estimating the average americans opinion
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  Speaker 1: on the same issue. Like if I ask you what
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  Speaker 1: the average American thinks about abortion access, chances are you'll
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  Speaker 1: try to intuit the answer using your own beliefs as
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  Speaker 1: a guide. But people also rely on other methods like
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  Speaker 1: stereotypes like Texans are conservative or Californians are liberal, or
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  Speaker 1: maybe they'll rely on actual knowledge about the issue, like
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  Speaker 1: public opinion polling or a recent election result. But when
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  Speaker 1: it comes to intuiting the thoughts of God, the respondent's
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  Speaker 1: answers in the study were much more strongly correlated with
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  Speaker 1: their own opinions. As the researchers put it, inferences about
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  Speaker 1: God's beliefs are not readily available. One can quiz neighbors
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  Speaker 1: on their beliefs, read editorials about celebrities positions, or observe
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  Speaker 1: public opinion polls, but religious agents do not lend themselves
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  Speaker 1: to public opinion polling. These studies align with something that
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  Speaker 1: scholars of religion have been theorizing for over a century,
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  Speaker 1: reflects society. In his book The Elementary Forms of Religious Life,
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  Speaker 1: the sociologist Emil Durkheim argued that religious symbols, sacred stories, rituals,
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  Speaker 1: and gods are representations of society itself. They reflect the
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  Speaker 1: concerns and values of that society. The scholar Russell McCutchen
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  Speaker 1: summarizes his theory well. Durkhim understood claims about God to
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  Speaker 1: be a way in which participants projected outside themselves their
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  Speaker 1: sense of the group's own needs. When religious insiders make
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  Speaker 1: claims about God's wishes and God's judgment, these are symbolically
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  Speaker 1: coded talk about society's wishes and society's judgments. Philosophers have
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  Speaker 1: been saying something similar for centuries. The Greek philosophers Andophanes
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  Speaker 1: once said that if horses could draw, they'd paint their
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  Speaker 1: gods like horses, and the sociologists in the study quoted
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  Speaker 1: the seventeenth century philosopher's Spinoza. A triangle, if it could speak,
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  Speaker 1: would likewise say that God is eminently triangular, and a
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  Speaker 1: circle that God's nature is eminently circular. But Durkheim was
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  Speaker 1: among the first to build a systematic nowaturalistic field of
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  Speaker 1: study examining these claims and his theories are widely held
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  Speaker 1: by scholars of religion today, arguing that religious talk turns
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  Speaker 1: out to be society talk, or, to put a finer
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  Speaker 1: point on it, god talk turns out to be society talk.
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  Speaker 1: It gets tricky. Though. These studies might lead us to
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  Speaker 1: conclude that people simply create their gods in their own images,
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  Speaker 1: but sometimes it seems to be the other way around.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes someone's image of God influences their opinions. This is
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  Speaker 1: what sociologists call images of God research. These are studies
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  Speaker 1: arguing that people's ideas about God shape political views and values. So,
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  Speaker 1: for example, do you think Jesus is hyper masculine? Well,
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  Speaker 1: studies have found that people who believe in a hyper
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  Speaker 1: masculine God increases support for militarism and more severe forms
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  Speaker 1: of criminal punishment, including support for capital punishment. Other studies
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  Speaker 1: have found the belief in supernatural evil, like belief in
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  Speaker 1: Satan or hell, is also a strong predictor of supporting
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  Speaker 1: more severe criminal punishments. Another study found that people who
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  Speaker 1: see God as more judgmental are less likely to volunteer
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  Speaker 1: in their communities and on the flip side, though, those
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  Speaker 1: who think of God as less judgmental are more likely
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  Speaker 1: to volunteer. Now, scholars still debate about the cause and
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  Speaker 1: effect going on here, or the causal direction if we
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  Speaker 1: want to use the fancy term our political identities influencing
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  Speaker 1: Americans images of God or images of God influencing people's
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  Speaker 1: political identities. The authors of this ideological spectrum study argue
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  Speaker 1: for the former, the projection theory, since they found that
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  Speaker 1: religious affiliation and religiosity seem to have little effect on
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  Speaker 1: people's ratings. They agree with the perspective that societies largely
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  Speaker 1: project their biases and values onto their gods, though they
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  Speaker 1: are careful to say that they did not definitively demonstrate
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  Speaker 1: a causal direction in this study, so it doesn't necessarily
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  Speaker 1: contradict images of God research. But while these studies continue,
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  Speaker 1: this much seems clear Americans will continue to try to
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  Speaker 1: recruit Jesus to their side of the aisle. As the
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  Speaker 1: US has reached record levels of polarization in recent years.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm not just saying that based on vibes. Just
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  Speaker 1: to quote one of the many studies with these findings,
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  Speaker 1: America has reached record high levels of polarization and is
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  Speaker 1: now excessive polarized, which does not sound like a good thing.
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  Speaker 1: And I place a lot of the blame on social media,
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  Speaker 1: which filters us into echo chambers and rewards content heavily
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  Speaker 1: laced with ideological bias, which is why I'm always excited
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