Promote Or Inhibit?A Study Of The Relationship Between Religious Belief And Trust

After sorting out some relevant works and articles on trust,the relationship between religion and trust,and the internal mechanism of religious influence on trust,the author finds the relationship between religious belief and trust in works looks simple but is actually complicated and intricate.The academic conclusions show controversy and consensus coexist;the study of influence mechanism of religious influence is constrained by the complexity of trust itself,and the explanatory power of the internal mechanism of religious influence associated with religious belief is slightly weak.Many of the published articles,limited to space,just analyze the relationship between a certain type of trust and religious belief,and those published books with panorama materials is rare in China,so it is difficult to make a comprehensive description of multiple categories of trust.The study tries to use the comprehensive survey(Chinese Social Survey,CSS)2017 data,with Stata Analysis Tools,to explore the relationship between religious belief and trust and mechanism,at the same time combine the results of the empirical analysis,in the secular theory development with trust as the breakthrough point to discuss the Chinese religious group trust judgment in the process of religious and secular transformation.The study contents and findings are presented in the following four sections:The first part describes the situation of residents’ trust from the three dimensions of interpersonal trust,system trust and general trust.In interpersonal trust,relatives,friends,neighbors,colleagues,police,judges,party and government cadres,company owners,shop owners,teachers,doctors,strangers etc.,as the measured objects to describe the differences in trust level and demographic variables.And the data shows that the overall structure of individual trust in 12 types of natural persons is "the differential mode of association",namely the differential order trust structure;without the consideration of other influencing factors,the trust degree of residents in natural persons shows obvious differences,with the highest degree of trust in relatives and the lowest degree of trust in strangers.However,the different characteristics of individuals,such as gender,age,political status,income,education level,and marital status etc.,have different degrees of correlation to different natural persons.In the system trust,the central government,district and county governments,township governments,workers,young women and other mass organizations,work units,charities,news media,Internet,banks,insurance companies,hospitals,courts and 12 types of institutions,organizations are measured as the trust objects.The data shows that the central government has gained the highest level of trust,and the Internet has the lowest level of trust.Among the three types of government trust measurement,the central government is the most trusted,followed by district and county governments,and the township government has the lowest trust,which is basically a "central strong and district weak".The other type of industry organizations closely related to people’s living,including banks,hospitals,courts,have relatively higher trust,ranking the second,third and fourth place in the whole category.Those with the relatively lower trust levels are in the Internet,the insurance industry,charities and the news media.And for the work units,workers,young women and other mass organizations,district and county level and township level government trust is in the middle part of the overall trust rank.From the perspective of demographic characteristics,the correlation degree of different individual characteristics to the trust objects of different institutions varies greatly.The average value of residents’ general trust(10 points)is 6.095.Based on the data that 91.66%of respondents believe that the decline in social trust does not constitute the main social problems in China,it shows that the degree of general trust of residents is relatively high.Part two:Based on the description of trust status,the study analyzes the influence of religious belief on interpersonal trust,system trust and general trust.The differential order of interpersonal trust pattern and institutional trust pattern of religious belief groups are basically consistent with the trust differential order pattern of non-religious belief groups.it means that from the perspective of the pattern,the ranking structure of the two groups is similar,but there are significant differences in the trust degree.From the perspective of religious attributes,different religious attributes have different levels of trust on different types of trust.In the category of natural persons with trust differences,Christians have slightly less trust than non-religious believers,and Islam,Buddhist groups and folk believers have more trust than non-religious believers.In terms of institutional trust,the average trust degree of religious believers is higher than that of religious believers.From the perspective of overall significance,the influence of religious belief on the trust of various systems is different,the trust degree of central government,work units,charitable organizations,news media,Internet and insurance companies.And the religious belief has higher institutional trust degree than the religious belief,not the influence of mass organizations,courts,hospitals and banks.At the same time,the data show that having a religion has no significant influence on general trust.Part three:In view of the differences of religious beliefs on different types of trust,this paper uses the theoretical framework of social capital to interpret the internal mechanism of the relationship between the two sides.Social capital contains individual social capital,collective social capital and spiritual social capital.It is found that individual social capital and spiritual social capital play an intermediary role between religious belief and stranger belief,while the intermediary effect of collective social capital is not obvious.None of the individual social capital,the collective social capital or the spiritual social capital has a significant intermediary effect in the relationship between religious attribute and familiar trust,but at the same time,it is found that social capital has a regulatory effect.For the relationship between religion and uninstitutional trust,data shows that social capital in religious belief and uninstitutional trust relationship mediation effect,individual social capital in religious belief and uninstitutional trust relationship is not significant,collective social capital and spiritual social capital in religious belief and uninstitutional trust relationship have significant mediation effect.Part four:The development of Chinese religion is not belief and secular society secular influence or integration.With the domestic policy guidance,social and economic development atmosphere of enveloped and dynamic,religious education and modern education,religious internal self adjustment,in the face of a variety of religions,at the same time under the background of religious and secular coexistence,religious and secular transformation is possible,with trust object as the breakthrough point,discusses in the specific situation,occurs in the individual level or social level.The religious and secular transformation at the individual level may be caused by the changes in personal beliefs,life experiences or social environment.Individuals may be based on specific experience or in the specific situation of religious belief behavior motivation or will doubt or adjustment needs,to temporarily or permanently abandon under the guidance of religious behavior,to the secular behavior,in turn,also established,namely in a specific situation,secular social individual will turn to rely on the "sacred".On the social level,the transformation of religion and secular may be caused based on social change,modernization process or the transformation of values.With the progress of science,technology and education,the stickiness of religious beliefs and doctrines to believers may gradually become weaken,and secular ideas and values may gradually permeate.In short,the promotion,block or no influence of religion on trust is all the effects on specific situations or on specific trust objects.Individual social capital,collective social capital and spiritual social capital all play intermediary or regulating roles in the relationship mechanism between religion and trust.The difference in religious utility caused by this change in specific trust objects achieves interpretability in the framework of the interpretation of religiosity from secularity.