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Sacred to Secular: Investigating the Association Between Religious Conversion & Political Orientation: Investigating the Association Patterns Between Political Orientations and Different Religious Conversion Types: Conversion, De-conversion, and Re-conversion.
Linköping University, Department of Management and Engineering, The Institute for Analytical Sociology, IAS.
2024 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

This exploratory study delves into the intricate relationship between religious conversion and political orientation. This is one of the crucial but understudied aspects of the interplay between personal belief systems and political ideologies. Utilizing data from the General Social Survey between 1998 and 2021 in the United States, the research scrutinizes the correlation between religious conversion—through conversion, de-conversion, and re-conversion—and self-identified political orientations. Explicitly, it investigates how religious conversions can predict the liberal, moderate or conservative leanings of the individuals. Grounded in Schwartz's Theory of Basic Values, the study provides a theoretical framework for understanding potential shifts in values accompanying religious conversion. It hypothesizes that individuals undergoing religious change, conversion, or de-conversion are more likely to identify with liberal political orientations. In parallel, re-converts, those reverting to religious beliefs, lean towards conservative ideologies. The research incorporates demographic and socioeconomic factors to understand their influence on this relationship. Multinomial Logistic Regression is the main statistical method analyzing multiple political orientation categories along with various independent variables. The results reveal a significant association between religious conversions and political orientations, despite controlling for demographic and socioeconomic traits. Furthermore, it explores the average marginal effects of the key traits interacted with the conversion types in predicting the political orientation, which paves the way for further exploratory research. This contributes to the broader discourse on the dynamic interplay between personal belief systems and political ideologies, highlighting the transformative impact of religious conversion on political orientation. In addition, it underlines the need for further research, including more nuanced data collection around values and the timing of religious conversions, to deepen our understanding of this complex relationship.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2024. , p. 54
Keywords [en]
Religious Conversion, De-convert, Re-convert, Convert, Political Orientation, Schwartz's Values, Liberal, Conservative, Moderate, Demographic traits, Socioeconomic traits, General Social Survey
National Category
Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology) Religious Studies Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalisation Studies)
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-207500ISRN: LIU-IEI-FIL-A--24/04654--SEOAI: oai:DiVA.org:liu-207500DiVA, id: diva2:1896375
Subject / course
Master’s Thesis in Computational Social Science
Available from: 2024-09-12 Created: 2024-09-10 Last updated: 2024-09-12Bibliographically approved

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The Institute for Analytical Sociology, IAS
Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)Religious StudiesPolitical Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalisation Studies)

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

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Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf