State Support for Religion and Government Legitimacy in Christian-Majority Countries –

Most assume that when governments help a faith, they achieve this within the hope that they are going to improve their legitimacy. However, a rising literature implies that help for faith might lower a authorities’s legitimacy for 3 causes. First, political secularism, an ideology mandating the separation of faith and state or state restrictions on faith, is more and more fashionable. Second, state help for faith can undermine spiritual vitality. Third, help for faith entails a component of presidency management over faith which might undermine the perceived authenticity of a faith. We check this help–legitimacy relationship in Christian-majority international locations from 1990 to 2014 utilizing the Religion and State and World Values Survey knowledge, comprising 54 international locations and 126 nation years. We discover that state help for faith is related to decrease ranges of particular person confidence in authorities. We posit this has essential implications for our understanding of the underpinnings of legitimacy.