Religion can both hurt and enhance democratic attitudes.

What effect does religion have on democratic attitudes? Pazit Ben-Nun Bloom and Gizem Arikan outline the results of three studies they have conducted into the relationship between religion and democracy. They note that while religious belief can undermine democracy by generating more conservative values, religious social behaviour enhances support for democracy by fostering greater trust in institutions and engagement in politics

Globalisation has contributed to declining levels of religious freedom across the world

What factors affect religious freedom? As Pazit Ben-Nun Bloom and Gizem Arikan write, there is evidence that restrictions on religious freedom have increased globally in recent decades. Using data from a recent study, they highlight the role that processes of globalisation have had on this trend. The results indicate that globalisation is a contributing factor to the increase in restrictions on religious freedom, with this partly being explained by the perceived threat communities feel when they are exposed to members of other religions

Praying for both teams: how religion both facilitates anddampens anti-immigration sentiment

The majority of the populations of many countries, the US included, identify with some kind of religion. At the same time, anti-immigrant sentiments are on the rise in many countries. Does religion foster intolerance towards migrants or encourage greater acceptance of them? In new research which uses experiments conducted with a variety of religious groups, Pazit Ben-Nun Bloom, Gizem Arikan , and Marie Courtemanche find that when religious group identities are emphasized people become less tolerant of migrants, but when themes of religious compassion are brought to mind, they are more likely to be sympathetic. They caution, however, that such attempts at invoking compassion may be unlikely to convince the more conservative among the devout

"I was hungry and you gave me food": Religiosity and attitudes toward redistribution.

Current literature presents conflicting findings concerning the effect of religiosity on attitudes towards redistribution. This paper attempts to reconcile these findings by arguing that the belief and social behavior dimensions of religiosity affect support for redistribution via different mechanisms, and that these effects are moderated by state welfare generosity. Using multilevel path analysis models on data from the World Values Survey, we show that the effect of the religious belief on attitudes towards redistribution is mediated by competing personal orientations-prosocial values and conservative identification-while the religious social behavior dimension significantly decreases support for redistribution via increased levels of happiness. Lower levels of welfare generosity increase the positive effect of prosocial orientations and weaken the negative effect conservative identification, leading to positive or null indirect effect of religiosity. These findings show the importance of taking into account the multiple dimensions of religiosity and institutional context when studying the relationship between religion and redistribution attitudes

Accessibility of Religious Resources and Perceived Discrimination of Muslims in Western Europe

This project examines the relationship between accessibility of religious resources at the urban level and perceived group discrimination of Muslim immigrants (both first and second generation) in Western European countries, with an emphasis on the city of London and the UK. We conceptualize religious resources both at the social (e.g. having contacts or networks with people of the same religion) and physical (e.g. availability of places of worship) domains