Nj. Davis et Rv. Robinson, Their brothers' keepers? Orthodox religionists, modernists, and economic justice in Europe, AM J SOCIOL, 104(6), 1999, pp. 1631-1665
Through analyses of national surveys of 21 European countries and Israel, t
he authors test the conventional wisdom in Europe that modernists are to th
e left of the religiously orthodox on economic justice concerns. Modernists
are more individualistic than the orthodox in seeing individuals, not a de
ity, as responsible for their fates and as the ultimate moral arbiters. The
authors hypothesize that modernists are also economically individualistic
in believing that the poor or jobless, not the community or slate, should s
olve their own problems. The authors find that on economic concerns, modern
ists are far more likely to be to the right of the orthodox than to the lef
t.