Jan MewesMar 11, 2023
Kai Arzheimer

New publication๐Ÿšจ๐Ÿšจ๐Ÿšจ

Political #Secularism (PS) is a hot new topic. PS โ‰  absence of #religious belief/membership/practice, but the conviction that politics & religion should be kept separate. Where does it come from? Look no further than here #OpenAccess: https://ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1475-6765.12585

(Yes, I'm over the moon to get this published in one of my favourite journals)

Mar 11, 2023 at 11:40amWeb
Show threadKai ArzheimerMar 11, 2023
Little is known about its roots (particularly outside the US). That's unfortunate, b/c PS strongly affect citizens' views on morality policies (abortion, assisted suicide, same sex relations, stem cells ...), which are often highly controversial
Show threadKai ArzheimerMar 11, 2023
In the article, my focus is on the role of basic human values (Schwartz 1992ff). I derive 2 hypotheses: ๐˜€๐—ฒ๐—น๐—ณ ๐—ฑ๐—ถ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ๐—ฐ๐˜๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—ป should be linked to โ„Ž๐‘–๐‘”โ„Ž๐‘’๐‘Ÿ levels and ๐˜๐—ฟ๐—ฎ๐—ฑ๐—ถ๐˜๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—ป should be linked to ๐‘™๐‘œ๐‘ค๐‘’๐‘Ÿ levels of PS
Show threadKai ArzheimerMar 11, 2023
Over the last 3 decades, we have seen that basic human values are linked to almost everything, including religion. But PS
โ‰  absence of religion (although it is obviously linked to religion). What gives?
Show threadKai ArzheimerMar 11, 2023
Multivariate analysis of data from Germany supports both hypotheses. Crucially, the relationships hold when controlling for three main facets of religion, for region (east vs west), and for socio-demographics
Show threadKai ArzheimerMar 11, 2023
Net of their well-documented association with religion, basic human values contribute to our understanding of political secularism. More generally, the findings also show once more the impact of basic human values on all areas of political life.
Show threadKai ArzheimerMar 11, 2023

But the main point is that we now know a little more about the roots of political secularism, which is already changing (European) politics. Find the full write-up & replication data/code here:

https://ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1475-6765.12585

https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/Z8VYBK

Show threadKai ArzheimerMar 11, 2023
Thank you for coming to my TED talk