Importance Of Capital And Religion: Understanding Social Capital

Social Capital and Religion: Understanding Religious Social Capital

Society’s stock of social capital can come from multiple sources, including both individual level factors such as, age, level of education, gender, financial and marital status, and country level factors like, country’s wealth, income inequality, governance quality, shared history. However, the contribution of religion is one of the less explored topic among the sources of social capital. It was Tocqueville who first recognised the religious life as an important contributor to civil society and associational life. For him, associational life is essential for well-being of democracy and protection of individual liberty. Religious associational life, though not explicitly political

Usually, scholars made a comparison between Protestant and Catholic denominations. Empirical studies found that Protestantism have positive relationship with social capital while a negative relationship has been confirmed with Catholicism (Putnam, Leonardi and Nonetti 1994; Lam 2006 et al.). Catholicism stressed upon close relationship between church and family, and nurtured hierarchical structures that foster vertical relations of passivity and subordination, such as bishop-priests-laymen relation. This makes Catholic congregations inward-oriented (bonding social capital). Whereas Protestant church are outward-oriented (bridging social capital), favouring horizontal ties between the member and the leaders, thus encouraging participation outside the church and family and laymen leadership. Therefore, horizontal authority structures are more likely to generate social capital in general (J. A. Coleman

Church life created a dense social networks as the church members develop friendship and companionship by praying and worshipping together. Such networks are crucial component of social capital as it enables the cooperation among community members to achieve mutual benefits. So it directly implicates mutual obligation and norms of generalised reciprocity. Social interaction among the community also increases the likelihood of trust. The more they connect the more the trust each other (Putnam