Views on God may affect voting

Forget the red states/blue states explanation. The real measure of how Americans vote — and buy and think — has less to do with geography and more to do with how people imagine God.

That's one of the conclusions of an exhaustive study by Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion released Monday but first reported at the Religion Newswriters Association conference held last week in Salt Lake City. The study, conducted by The Gallup Organization, asked 1,721 Americans more than 350 questions about how they worship, pray and tackle political issues.

The researchers concluded that Americans imagine God in one of four ways: authoritarian, benevolent, critical or distant.

The Authoritarian God is highly involved in daily lives and world affairs, and also capable of meting out punishment to the unfaithful and ungodly. The Benevolent God is a positive influence in lives and in the world, and less willing to punish. The Critical God does not interact with the world, and views the current state of the world unfavorably. The Distant God is neither active nor angry but simply a cosmic force that set the laws of nature in motion. And of course atheists are certain that none of these gods exist at all.

Researchers then correlated these categories with Americans' views on issues such as abortion, the environment and capital punishment, and with their party affiliations, church affiliations and church attendance.

Some of the conclusions:

• Women tend to believe in an engaged God (Authoritarian or Benevolent), men in a distant God.

• Easterners tend toward belief in a Critical God.

• Believers in either an Authoritarian or Benevolent God are more likely to attend church weekly and pray several times a day.

• God's anger alone (Critical God) does little to inspire religious participation or prayer.

• Catholics and mainline Protestants tend toward belief in a more Distant God.

• Believers in an Authoritarian God are nearly twice as likely to believe that abortion is always wrong than the American public as a whole.

• Eighty percent of believers in an Authoritarian God believe gay marriage is "always wrong," compared to 30 percent of believers in a Distant God.

• Believers in an Authoritarian God are more than twice as likely as believers in a Distant God to agree that the Iraq War is justified.

The researchers also found that more than four-fifths of Americans believe that God does not favor a political party. And "paranormal" beliefs (including astrology, communicating with the dead and UFOs) are more prevalent in Eastern states, least prevalent in the South.