Despite media perceptions, study finds correlation between religion, successful life

Religious belief tends to be associated with key indicators of a successful life, such as education level and marital status, a recent study found. Ryan Burge, a political scientist who studies religion in American public life, writes that religion in the United States had become an “enclave” for those who have college degrees, stable marriages and children, and middle-class income

“What the media tell you is that it’s the most educated among us who never go to church, and it’s the least educated among us who always go to church,” said Ben Shapiro who leads “The Daily Wire.” “And that actually is not true. When you identify that marital status, what you find is that married people go to religious services weekly at a far higher rate than people of any other marital status.”

In his article, Burge said the key takeaway from the numbers would be that churches should be more welcoming to those who do not have as successful lives. Shapiro said that there was an inverse way to read the data as well.

“But there’s a way to read this in reverse, and that is that the rules that the elite of our society, marital elite, the parental elite, the income elite, the educationally elite have applied to themselves are very different than the rules they’ve promulgated to the rest of society,” he said. “And you see this very clearly in the social science data.”

Shapiro added that the media were pushing a narrative of success that was the opposite of reality, saying that this message was harmful to society at large.

“Now, if you look at the media or if you look at the way the government treats this, it’s precisely the opposite,” he said. “They pretend that the people who are most likely to be successful in our society are single female Berkeley graduates with no children who hate God and hate the church. Those are the people who are most likely to be successful if you watch TV.”