Religious faith and support of government

The September ’06 issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion contains an article about the relation between religious belief (religiosity) and support of tax fraud. In a 36-country study of about 45,728 responses, the article concludes that, “the higher the individual’s level of religiosity, the lower the TFA [tax fraud acceptability]. ..Furthermore, the presence of a communist regime in a nation, often known for the oppression of religious groups who then may view the regime as illegitimate, diminished the impact of religion on TFA.” In other words, not only do religious people support the government with honesty in taxpaying, the suppression of religion seems to result in poorer support for taxpaying. It is not too much of a stretch to suggest from these data that as a government oppresses religious expression in government-controlled circles, the resulting population may well lose regard for government authority.

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