Perceived political instability increases belief in God and vice versa.

Evidence

Interestingly, faith in government and faith in God appear to compensate for each other. In one study, Aaron Kay and his colleagues had Canadian participants read a news story about government instability in Ottawa. “Nobody can predict when an election will be held,” the story went, and “it is not clear what that would mean for the ordinary Canadian.” The comparison group read a similarly worded story touting political stability in Canada, and how elections, even if called, would not disturb things. Then participants were asked about their belief in God. Perceptions of political instability increased belief in God. And conversely, in a separate study, perceptions of a strong, stable Canadian government reduced belief in God, particularly among people who saw God as a source of control over the world. Kay and colleagues also found that electoral instability just before national elections undermined faith in the government, which then led to subsequent increases in faith in God. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 569

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Directly extends Norenzayan’s Big God thesis the reader is integrating—divine and secular authority as substitutable control mechanisms. Connects to the fumi-e analysis: state authority and priestly authority are competing providers of the same monitoring function.
• QUESTION: Does this substitutability predict that strong states (Japan under the Tokugawa, for instance) would actively suppress religious authority as a rival to the secular gaze?

Related

• Perceived government instability increases belief in God as compensation (similarity 0.94)
• Secular governments and religious belief serve interchangeable functions, so strong states supplant gods. (similarity 0.85)
• Threatened personal control increases faith in God or government interchangeably (similarity 0.82)
• Strong secular institutions can substitute for watchful gods in enforcing morality. (similarity 0.81)
• Religious belief cannot be understood apart from secular authority structures (similarity 0.80)
• Gods and governments occupy the same functional niche in human psychology (similarity 0.80)
• Surveillance alone cannot substitute for religion; only trusted secular authority does. (similarity 0.79)
• Secular government functions as a continuation of religious authority by other means (similarity 0.78)
• Religious belief withers when governments provide the cooperation religion once supplied. (similarity 0.78)