Rodney Stark finds that higher church membership is related to lower crime rates.
- Type
- Book
- Source
- Rodney Stark Non-LDS
- Hearsay
- Secondary
- Reference
Rodney Stark, America's Blessings: How Religion Benefits Everyone, Including Atheists (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2012), 49
- Scribe/Publisher
- Templeton Press
- People
- Rodney Stark
- Audience
- Reading Public
- Transcription
Based on the nation's major cities, the following generalizations not only are supported by recent data, but also by data going as far back as the 1920s.
- The higher a city's church membership rate, the lower its burglary rate.
- The higher a city's church membership rate, the lower its larcenty rate.
- The higher a city's church membership rate, the lower its robbery rate.
- The higher a city's church membership rate, the lower its assault rate.
- The higher a city's church membership rate, the lower its homicide rate.
However, the church membership rate is less strongly related to the assault and homicide rates than to the other crime rates--probably because many assaults and homicides are crimes of passion in which the offender acted on impulse and gave little or no thought to moral concerns.
- Citations in Mormonr Qnas
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