Robert Woodberry

Baylor University | BU · Institute for the Study of Religion

This article demonstrates historically and statistically that conversionary Protestants (CPs) heavily influenced the rise and spread of stable democracy around the world. It argues that CPs were a crucial catalyst initiating the development and spread of religious liberty, mass education, mass printing, newspapers, voluntary organizations, and colo...

Who shares their faith with people who have different religious views? This article examines ‘faith sharing’ across 22 religiously diverse countries. To our knowledge, this is the first study of ‘personal evangelism’ between religious groups across national contexts. Evangelism can be controversial, but both historically, and also in our data, it i...

Risk preference theory argues that the gender gap in religiosity is caused by greater female risk aversion. Although widely debated, risk preference theory has been inadequately tested. Our study tests the theory directly with phenotypic and genetic risk preferences in three dimensions—general, impulsive, and sensation‐seeking risk. Moreover, we ex...

This is my second response to "Conversionary Protestants Do Not Cause Democracy" by Nikolova and Polensky

This chapter first gives a brief overview of the origins, spread, and interaction of the major religious traditions and then discusses comparative and historical research about the social impact of religion. A major area of macro‐historical research in the sociology of religion has been the reconsideration of secularization theory – particularly at...

My first response to "Conversionary Protestants Do Not Cause Democracy" by Nikolova and Polensky

Online appendix Structure, Placement, and the Quest for Unidimensional Purity in Typologies of American Denominations. Empirically tests the best placement of American denominations.

Protestantism has expanded rapidly in Brazil in recent decades. The question we tackle in this paper is whether Protestantism has had a positive influence on male earnings in this setting, either through its influence on health and productivity, by way of social networks or employer favor and reduced discrimination, or through other mechanisms. We...

The growth of Protestantism among U.S. Latinos has been the focus of considerable discussion among researchers. Yet few studies investigate how Latino Protestants and Latino Catholics differ, or which types of Latinos convert from Catholicism to Protestantism. Our study tests various theories about why some Latinos convert including a modified vers...

In Volume 1 of Christianity and Freedom, leading historians uncover the unappreciated role of Christianity in the development of basic human rights and freedoms from antiquity through today. These include radical notions of dignity and equality, religious freedom, liberty of conscience, limited government, consent of the governed, economic liberty,...

What explains the strong spatial and temporal clustering of democratization around the world? Most diffusion theories assume that countries are influenced by developments in geographically neighboring states. However, we argue that people are more influenced by democratic developments in culturally similar countries (i.e., that have the same domina...

Discusses the social impact of proselytism in the context of humanitarianism and development.

Protestantism has expanded rapidly in Brazil in recent decades. The question we tackle in this paper is whether Protestantism has had a positive influence on male earnings in this setting, either through its influence on health and productivity, by way of social networks or employer favor and reduced discrimination, or through other mechanisms. We...

Protestantism has expanded rapidly in Brazil in recent decades. The question we tackle in this paper is whether Protestantism has had a positive influence on male earnings in this setting, either through its influence on health and productivity, by way of social networks or employer favor and reduced discrimination, or through other mechanisms. We...

Our original article espoused a simple way to recode religious groups on the General Social Survey (GSS) into historically meaningful categories and attempted to steer social scientists away from assigning these groups to a "Liberal-Moderate-Conservative" scale (Smith 1990). Among other problems, such scales create arbitrary cutpoints, have little...

Rethinking Micro - Level SecularizationReligious PluralizationReligion and HealthAdolescent ReligionConservative Protestantism in the United StatesTolerance and PrejudiceReligion and Social JusticeImproving Religion MeasuresGlobalizing ReligionReligion and Economic and Political OutcomesConclusion References

Appendix II from Woodberry, Robert D. 2012. “The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy” American Political Science Review 106(2): 244-274. It contains 11 additional tables I had hoped to reserve for future publications. They mainly show the relationship between Protestant mission and the intervening mechanism – e.g., book publishing, education, ING...

The relationship between religion and educational ideals in Taiwan is explored using the Taiwan Social Change Survey (1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005). Religion seems to influence the overall level of educational ideals. Both before and after controls, Taiwanese Protestants have the highest educational ideals for both boys and girls; the nonreligious ha...

Many scholars note the exceptional economic and political performance of Botswana relative to other Sub-Saharan African Countries (e.g., Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson 2003; Lange 2009). Since independence Botswana has had one of the highest average growth rates in the world, plus high rule of law, political rights, and social rights relative to ot...

Although often ignored, religion has profoundly shaped political and economic conditions around the world. This claim is suggested by three historical divergences: (1) a divergence between Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim regions of Europe (these differences emerged after the Reformation and began to dissipate only after World War II) (Yo...

Using regional data for about 180 African provinces, we find that measures of Protestant missionary activity in the past are more correlated with schooling variables today than similar measures of Catholic missionary activity, as previous papers have suggested. However, we find that this effect is mainly driven by differences in Catholic areas (i.e...

This article explores Protestantism’s inadvertent, historic role in dispersing elite power and spurring democracy. Economic and political elites typically hoard resources and perpetuate class distinction. Conversionary Protestants undermined this social reproduction because they wanted everyone to read the Bible in their own language, decide indivi...

Description of the technical innovations and content of the Project on Religion and Economic Development Database on Protestant and Catholic missionary activity around the world.

Using regional data for about 180 African provinces, we find that measures of Protestant missionary activity in the past are more correlated with schooling variables today than similar measures of Catholic missionary activity, as previous papers have suggested. However, we find that this effect is mainly driven by differences in Catholic areas (i.e...

Abstract It has been extremely difficult to demonstrate that foreign aid has any positive influence on economic growth. Easterly, Levine and Roodman (2004) challenge the robustness of Burnside and Dollar’s (2000) claim that aid is associated with growth when governments enact the right policies. We show that Burnside and Dollar’s result disappears...

Using regional data for about 180 African provinces, we find that measures of Protestant missionary activity in the past are more correlated with schooling variables today than similar measures for Catholic missionary activity, as previous papers have suggested. However, we find that this effect is mainly driven by differences in Catholic areas (ie...

Rethinking Micro-level SecularizationReligious TransformationReligious PluralizationReligion and HealthConservative Protestantism in the United StatesTolerance and PrejudiceReligion and Social JusticeImproving Religion MeasuresGlobalizing ReligionConclusion

Using cross-country data for about 70 countries and regional data for about 180 African provinces, we show that competition between Protestant and Catholic missionaries increased schooling in former colonies. Our evidence implies that Protestant missionaries increased schooling in Catholic countries by more than Catholic missionaries, but we cannot...

Christian missionaries were crucial to the development of formal education throughout much of the world, including East Asia. They generally provided the first Western formal education, often initially against local resistance. They demonstrated the economic value of this education – which spurred later demand. They trained many of the teachers who...

Society Transaction SOCIAL SCIENCE AND MODERN  A lthough no one knows exactly how many Pentecostal and charismatic Christians there are in the world, this cluster of movements is clearly one of the largest and fastest growing of the religious movements. Some scholars argue it will soon become the predominant form of Christianity. In the United Sta...

Recently, scholars have devoted renewed attention to the role of religion in American life. Thus, it is important that they use the most effective means available to categorize and study religious groups. However, the most widely used classification scheme in survey research (T.W. Smith 1990) does not capture essential differences between American...

Although missionaries are popularly associated with colonialism and blamed for antagonizing indigenous cultures, religious freedom and missionary activity have historically been synergistic. In addition, the effects of missionaries from the past twocenturies are still measurable in education, lower infant mortality, democracy, abolition of slavery,...

We use the historical experience of former colonies to shed light on current debates about the effects of school competition on student outcomes. Using cross- country data for about 70 countries and regional data for about 180 African provinces, we show that competition between Protestant and Catholic missionaries increased schooling levels in form...

In the United States, highly religious people tend to live longer, have fewer health and mental problems, steal less, volunteer more time, and give away more money than others. Even when other relevant factors are controlled for statistically, these differences persist. Moreover, in many cases the religiosity of the community influences these facto...

According to cross-national research, Protestantism has significantly contributed to global democratization. While Protestantism does not inevitably cause democratization, it often generates social dynamics that favor it. Some of the most important of these are: 1) the rise of religious pluralism; 2) the development of democratic theory and practic...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2004. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 239-272). Microfiche. s

Since the rise of the religious right, scholars have become increasingly interested in studying conservative Protestantism. Not only do conservative Protestants (CPs) make up at least a quarter of the US population; they differ from many Americans in gender-role attitudes, childrearing styles, political orientation, and other ways as well. In fact,...

Classroom-based exercises, when used regularly and appropriately, foster many valuable skills. Building on advice scattered across various articles, as well as our own classroom experiences, we offer some general guidelines for planning and running classroom exercises. We focus on planning exercises effectively, communicating these plans to student...

Objective. As concern about the separation of church and state continues to grow, it may be instructive to examine the relationship between individuals' attitudes toward abortion and their support for political lobbying by religious groups. Methods. We collected data from a representative sample of registered Catholic parishioners who were surveyed...

This research note demonstrates that, on average, the poorer the quality of a survey the more it over-samples religious respondents because religious respondents are easier to contact and more cooperate. Thus, much of the gap between survey reports of church attendance and "actual church attendance" is caused by sampling problems in the surveys use...

A recent article in the American Sociological Review (Hadaway, Marler and Chaves 1993) claims that church attendance is only half the level reported on surveys. They suggest this may be due to social desirability bias. If true, this has serious implications for survey research. In this thesis I demonstrate that little is actually due to social desi...