Religion, clubs, and emergent social divides

Arguments regarding the existence of an American cultural divide are frequently placed in a religious context. This paper seeks to establish that, all politics aside, the American religious divide is real, that religious polarization is not a uniquely American phenomenon, and that religious divides can be understood as naturally emergent within the club theory of religion. Analysis of the survey data reveals a bimodal distribution of religious commitment in the U.S. International data reveals evidence of bimodal distributions in all twenty-nine surveyed countries. The club theory of religion, applied in an agent-based computational model, generates bimodal distributions of member commitment.

► We find empirical evidence of religious polarization in the U.S. and internationally. ► We build an agent-based model of religious clubs. ► Bimodal distributions emerge within the modeled populations. ► Model polarization correlates to population wage rates and substitutability of club goods for standard goods. ► Religious polarization has important ramifications for majority rule elections when religion is politically salient.