Why religion matters
December 19, 2006 | By Nathaniel Ward
A steadily growing body of evidence from the social sciences demonstrates that regular religious practice benefits individuals, families, and communities, and thus the nation as a whole. In a new paper, Heritage scholar Pat Fagan argues that religious practice is the key to social stability.
Regular attendance at religious services is linked to healthy, stable family life, strong marriages, and well-behaved children. The practice of religion also leads to a reduction in the incidence of domestic abuse, crime, substance abuse, and addiction. In addition, religious practice leads to an increase in physical and mental health, longevity, and education attainment. Moreover, these effects are intergenerational, as grandparents and parents pass on the benefits to the next generations.
Fagan continues: “Strong and repeated evidence indicates that the regular practice of religion has beneficial effects in nearly every aspect of social concern and policy. This evidence shows that religious practice protects against social disorder and dysfunction.”
Religion and charity
Faith also plays a very direct role in determining who’s prone to make charitable gifts, author Arthur Brooks explained yesterday in The Heritage Foundation’s Lehrman Auditorium. Through his research, the author of Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism found that religious individuals give more to charity than do non-religious individuals.
“There’s no comparison” between the charitable giving habits of those who attend religious services and those who don’t, Brooks said.
Click here to find out more on how religion influences charitable behavior.
Remembering LBJ’s real legacy
A few years ago, liberals in the House of Representatives proposed renaming the Department of Education’s headquarters building after President Lyndon Johnson. Heritage education expert Dan Lips explains that conservatives have every reason to support the measure (emphasis added):
Naming the Department of Education to honor LBJ would be a permanent reminder of the tragic history of federal education policy. It would also warn future Republican administrations and Congresses about the folly of Johnson's “Great Society” strategy for improving education.
Johnson’s big-government solutions have failed for four decades running, Lips explains, leaving generations of children to suffer from mediocre schooling even as the government throws more and more money at the problem. Naming the Department of Education in his honor would be “a lasting monument to President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s failed strategy for improving American education.”
Free enterprise at the World Bank
International organizations are typically rather one-sided in their policy prescriptions: raise taxes, increase spending, increase regulation, and so on. Heritage tax expert Dan Mitchell notes some of the worst offenders:
The International Monetary Fund recently published a sloppy—and quickly discredited—paper attacking the flat tax. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development may be even worse. This Paris-based bureaucracy actually has an anti-tax competition project that tries to penalize nations with low tax rates. The United Nations, meanwhile, has a crazy idea for global taxes.
Gutting the pork
In what comes as good news for taxpayers and fiscal conservatives, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has pledged to eliminate 10,000 earmarks from the bills laying out this year’s budget. “In effect,” write Heritage budget analysts Brian Riedl and Ron Utt, “Pelosi intends to demonstrate that henceforth the budget of the United States government will be made in the United States Capitol, not in the offices of the several thousand lobbyists who have hijacked the process by selling earmarks to clients.”
In his weekly radio address Saturday, President Bush rightly praised the Democratic leadership for its earmarks pledge. He also announced a new initiative to curtail pork-barrel spending: “My administration will soon lay out a series of reforms that will help make earmarks more transparent, that will hold the members who propose earmarks more accountable, and that will help reduce the number of earmarks inserted into large spending bills.” If enacted, these reforms could be a good start on the path to fiscal responsibility.
President’s Club transcripts online
Transcripts of the fall President’s Club meeting are now available on MyHeritage.org:
- Steve Forbes discusses the importance of keeping taxes low
- Larry Kudlow says conservatives must return to fiscally prudent policies
- Economist Arthur Laffer explains the four pillars of Reaganomics
In other news
- The FBI says that the number of crimes reported nationally rose by more than three percent in the first half of 2006. The report did not offer an explanation.
- The Palestinians are giving the Iraqis a run for their money when it comes to waging civil war: gunmen representing the ruling Hamas and opposition Fatah terrorist groups waged gun-battles with one another over the weekend, prompting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to call for new elections.
- Gov. Mitt Romney’s free-market health care reforms in Massachusetts, which Heritage helped design, are drawing national attention, The Boston Globe reports.
- According to The New York Times, the income tax the government imposes on its citizens’ overseas earnings is leading many expatriates to renounce their citizenship.
- Time magazine, apparently unable to decide on its Man of the Year for 2006, went with a cop-out instead: “You. Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world.” The magazine chose “You” over individual newsmakers like George W. Bush, Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Nancy Pelosi.
- Congress can’t keep a lid on runaway federal spending even on projects in its own backyard. The new Capitol visitor center, the DC Examiner reports, is costing taxpayers more than twice what was budgeted—and only 20 percent (or $75 million) of the increased cost is security-related.
- In what the mainstream media describe as a victory for Iranian “moderates,” Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has won election to Iran’s Assembly of Experts, the country’s ruling religious body. While he’s an opponent of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmahdinejad, Rafsanjani is also a wanted terrorist who has called for the use of nuclear weapons on Israel, as the Claremont Institute points out. So much for moderation.
Coming up at Heritage
To attend these or any other Heritage Foundation events, RSVP at Heritage’s events website. Or you can watch these events live online at Heritage.org. All times are Eastern.
- On Tuesday, January 9 at noon, author John Taylor explains how international finance has been used as a vital weapon in the war on terror.
Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.
