Aggressive atheists
like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and their media enablers 
like to
claim that religion is “dangerous”, that it spreads prejudice and leads to
societal division.
Religion
can have these effects, as can other ideologies and philosophies, including
atheism,
but there is lots of evidence to knock down
such claims. For example, a report we published in
2008, written by Professor Patricia Casey draws on many studies showing the mental and
physical health benefits of religion. In the field of education, Catholic
schools both here and in the UK have shown themselves to be extremely inclusive, not divisive
We
also know that religious people tend to give more of their time and money than
the non-religious. In a recent Wall
Street Journal article, Professor Robert Putnam (of Bowling Alone fame) and his
co-author David Campbell show that the most
religious people in America give away on average $3,000 to charity each year,
compared with $1,000 by the least religious.
This
is despite the fact that religious people tend to have slightly less money than
the non-religious. When income is taken into account, the most religious are
four times as generous as the least religious.
In their new book, “American Grace: How Religion Divides
and Unites Us,” Campbell and Putnam point out that in 2006, 80 per cent of all
Americans reported having made a charitable contribution in the previous year.
But religious people contributed more than others.
However,
they add: “Of the most
secular fifth of Americans, two-thirds said they gave money to charity in the
previous year. That’s an impressive number, but it pales next to the 94% of the
most religious fifth who reported making a charitable
donation.
“We find the same
pattern when we examine how much people give. On average, those in the most
religious fifth donate $3,000 to charity annually. Those in the most secular
fifth give approximately $1,000. The story is the same when we consider
charitable giving as a fraction of household income: By this measure, religious
Americans are four times as generous as their secular neighbors, even as they
are a little less affluent than secular Americans.
“The ‘religious edge’
in giving isn’t attributable to some other demographic characteristic common to
religious Americans. These results hold up even after accounting for a wide
array of other factors known to influence charitable donations, such as income,
age, education, marital status, gender and race.”
In other words,
religious people generally are more
charitable.
What these figures
suggest is that a more religious population is a population in which charity and volunteerism is stronger, not weaker. Religion is an expression of social
cohesion and solidarity. Surely it is the absence of such qualities that is
“dangerous”?