Left Right Out

It must be hard being a fundie in the US*. Not even the Republicans are willing to don a biohazard suit, grab the nearest ten foot pole and touch you anymore:

Some Americans are having a change of heart about mixing religion and politics. A new survey finds a narrow majority of the public saying that churches and other houses of worship should keep out of political matters and not express their views on day-to-day social and political matters.

[. . .]

The new national survey by the Pew Research Center reveals that most of the reconsideration of the desirability of religious involvement in politics has occurred among conservatives. Four years ago, just 30% of conservatives believed that churches and other houses of worship should stay out of politics. Today, 50% of conservatives express this view.

The Pew survey also finds

a small but significant increase since 2004 in the percentage of respondents saying that they are uncomfortable when they hear politicians talk about how religious they are — from 40% to 46%. Again, the increase in negative sentiment about religion and politics is much more apparent among Republicans than among Democrats.

Via a commenter at Pharyngula.

*OK, OK. It’s far too soon to make this call.

YourMorals.org

YourMorals.org is a website produced by a group of social psychologists researching the interplay between morality and politics. In their own words:

Our goal was to create a site that would be useful and interesting to users, particularly ethics classes and seminars, and that would also allow us to test a variety of theories about moral psychology. One of our main goals is to foster understanding across the political spectrum. Almost everyone cares about morality, and we want to understand –and to help others understand — the many different ways that people care.

This is a laudable project, although all it tells us essentially is that which we should already know: that conservatives and progressives not only can have different ideas about right and wrong on at least some moral questions, but will also differ on what morality itself is all about. (Progressives emphasise the harm principle; for conservatives, emotion and disgust are also important.) Still, the culture wars can only benefit by the promotion of a more widespread understanding of where the opposition is coming from.

YourMorals.org is not a single test but rather a series of tests, with more tests being added to and subtracted from the list in accordance with the needs of the researchers. You have to register with an email address in order to take the tests, but I think this kind of research is worth supporting.

Also worth a read is an Edge article by one of the researchers, Jonathan Haidt. In “What Makes People Vote Republican?” Haidt argues that Republicans have been successful because they have a better grasp of the “full specrum of American moral concerns,” and if the Democrats wish to replicate that success they should look for ways to appeal to those concerns—ingroup/loyalty, purity/sanctity and authority/respect (the three Durkheimian foundations, as Haidt puts it).

HT: The Barefoot Bum.

Things they’d have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City XIX

The week in fundie . . .

1. Religion as child abuse: members of a religious cult known as the Grail Movement kept a seven-year-old boy “chained in a closet as relatives hacked off pieces of his flesh to eat.” The Grail Movement makes the Manson family sound like the Hanson family: in 2000, its spiritual leader Jiří Adam “had his followers sign all their property over to him and forced the women into hard labor on at least two of his properties.” Detectives compared the victims to Auschwitz inmates. (Via Pharyngula)
2. Anti-gay activist and quack Paul Cameron is in Russia to support the local authorities’ crackdown on gay rights marches, and welcomes the embrace of his ideas by the sociology department at Moscow State University, a school which has
   

   distributed a brochure to all students that approvingly quotes the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ blames Freemasons and Zionists for the world wars, and claims that they control U.S. and British policy and the global financial system.

   (Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion)

3. The Bilerico Project reports on a gay rights supporter who collapsed at a demonstration outside San Francisco’s City Hall–to the cheers of a group of loving Christian anti-gay protestors, one of whom was chanting “Satan Got You!” and “What is the Devil whispering in your ear?” (Via Dispatches From the Culture Wars)