Worlds Apart? The Impact of Religion on Moral Policy Patterns

In large-N macro-quantitative studies the impact of religion on moral policies is usually examined separately for each policy. As religious ethics provide guidelines for a wide range of moral policies, however, they are likely to create patterns of moral policies that differ from country to country, depending on the predominant religion. The paper follows this intuition. In an analysis of all UN member states on which data is available it examines three of the most controversial moral policies: abortion law, capital punishment, and the legal regulation of homosexuality (ranging from the prohibition of homosexual acts to the legalization of same-sex marriage). The analysis is expected to reveal two distinct patterns: a catholic one, characterized by restrictive abortion laws, abolished capital punishment, and non-criminalized homosexuality without legal recognition of homosexual partnerships, and a Muslim one, which involves restrictive abortion laws, retentionist positions on the death penalty, and the widespread criminalization of homosexuality. The paper analyses whether these two patterns do indeed exist and which countries deviate from the dominant patterns. In addition, it investigates whether these patterns are influenced by the potentially secularizing forces of modernization and globalization. Ex ante expectations for policy patterns shaped by other world religions or other Christian denominations are less clear. One reason is that Protestantism varies considerably across the globe. While in Europe liberal positions dominate, people in the Global South and the U.S. tend to take a more conservative stance. And since most Orthodox countries are in Eastern Europe, an analysis on Orthodoxy suffers from the confounding influence of a Communist past, one consequence of which is a very liberal abortion law. The impact of both Protestantism and Orthodoxy on moral policy patterns will be examined. Apart from quantitative analyses the paper also includes a short case study on nine countries with a Buddhist majority.