Judgmental God image, social embeddedness, and social trust among the highly religious in the United States

Abstract

In this article we explore two propositions concerning the manner in which judgmental God image affects social trust among the highly religious in the United States. One proposition argues that having a judgmental God image and being highly embedded in a community of co-religionists can create low levels of social trust through social bonding and the formation of particularized trust. The other proposition maintains that embeddedness in a moral community of co-religionists helps to reinforce the idea that people are basically good and require love and forgiveness. This leads to higher levels of trust. We test an interaction between judgmental God image and social embeddedness with OLS analysis and data from the 2014 Baylor Religion Survey. We restrict the analysis to the highly religious, those who have no doubt about the existence of God and belong to a place of worship. We find that respondents with a judgmental God image who do not belong to a moral community with any or a few friends have the lowest levels of social trust. Those who have a judgmental God image but are highly embedded in a moral community with at least half of their friends have higher levels of social trust. Embeddedness negates the negative effects of judgmental God image on social trust. Implications for research are discussed in the conclusion.