“He Who Believes Is Not Afraid”: Effects of Religion on Engagement in Conflict

• In Event: Bringing Belief Back In

Abstract

Scholarship has debated whether and how religiosity drives conflict. Recent literature has argued that leaders instrumentally manipulating religious sentiment to overcome collective action problems explains the apparent relationship. I propose a different mechanism by which individual religiosity leads people to participate in conflict. Religiosity gives people a sense of supernatural protection, reducing fear associated with conflict. Reduced fear, in turn, leads people to hold more hardline attitudes toward conflict resolution, and makes them more willing to participate in hostilities. I test this proposed mechanism of religiosity affecting engagement in conflict through reducing fear in the case of Israel/Palestine. I show that secular Israeli Jews are more likely than religious Jews to leave the disputed West Bank territory in response to violent escalations. Second, I test my proposed mechanism of religiosity reducing fear using monthly survey data on fear of terrorism conducted during a period of increased political violence in Israel/Palestine in 2015-2016, linked to an original dataset of all instances of political violence in the area. I show that attacks in a respondent's area do not significantly affect levels of fear among religious people; on the other hand, attacks lead to greater fear of terrorism among secular people. Further, survey data collected during the 2023 war between Israel and Hamas shows that religiosity is associated with substantially lower fear related to the hostilities. A further experimental component testing the effect of a supernatural protection prime and security prime on reported fear and attitudes toward conflict resolution is also currently in progress.

Author

• Hannah Kazis-Taylor, Princeton University