The verdict of “not guilty” in the George Zimmermam case has given rise to a wide-ranging—and frequently acrimonious—debate over the issue of crime.
Was it reasonable, for instance, for Mr. Zimmerman to suspect the young man he shot to death of having criminal intentions simply because he was black and walking in a neighborhood in which he did not live?
Sad to say, views are so politically polarized that nothing very useful is likely to emerge from the heated rhetoric.
Rather than the pointing of fingers, a rather more fruitful discussion might involve of an examination of the underlying factors that have caused crime to thrive—of which that hardy old chestnut “drugs” is merely a symptom to the disease itself.
A useful starting point might well be a book published a couple of years ago authored by an academic named Byron R. Johnson.
The book—More God, Less Crime—is a survey of every study between 1944 and 2010 that measured the possible effect of religion on crime.
Mr. Johnson appears well qualified to conduct such a survey. A professor of criminology at Baylor University, Waco, Texas, he has been studying off-and-on relationships between crime and religion since the mid-1980s.
Professor Johnson reports that during six and a half decades covered by his survey some 273 studies of the effects of religion on crime were conducted.
This seems an astoundingly small number of such studies. After all, the era in which they took place was one of profound social change during which the increase in the crime and incarceration rates was exceeded only by the exponential growth in our institutions of higher education.
One thus might reasonably have expected this interesting and intriguingly controversial subject would have been studied to death at the rapidly expanding university departments of religion, social research, and psychology. But not so.
The remarkable absence of interest in the subject is all the more puzzling considering the results of Professor Johnson’s survey: Even though the authors of the studies under review used different methods and assessed different groups and people, their conclusions were quite remarkable.
A full 90 percent of the studies found that more religiosity led to less crime. Only 2 percent found that religion produced more crime. The remaining 8 percent found no relationship one way or the other.
Professor Johnson points out that none of the studies he surveyed could be assessed in what we have come to regard as a proper scientific manner.
To meets such standards the researchers would have had to recruit cadres of subjects who had no religion, assigning some to adopt and practice a religion, and the rest to a godless control group. The two group’s crime rates could then be measured statistically and assessed.
But in this instance such methods would be clearly unethical and impractical (not to say immoral and illegal, should such considerations concern modern academe).
Even so, one might be inclined to think that the extraordinary 90 percent positive track record of the studies might prompt a few cutting edge academics to take up the challenge.
The fact that none have done it is probably explained by the effect Professor Johnson’s interest in the relationship religion and crime has had on his career.
At the Memphis State University in Tennessee (now The University of Memphis) in the mid-1980s, he was warned by his department chairman that none of the scholarly articles he had published about religion would count towards getting tenure.
Two years later he was fired— despite the fact that he had acted on the warning and concentrated on publishing articles on subjects other than religion and received high student evaluations.
Asked why, the dean told him: “I don’t need to have a reason. I can let you go if I don’t like the color of you eyes.”
Dismissing his final appeal, the provost told him: “You simply don’t fit in here. I think you need to consider a job teaching at some small Christian college.” He then warned the young academic that he would “have the same problem” at any other state university. Professor Johnson then said to the provost: “If I were a Marxist we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we?” The provost “nodded in agreement.”
This dismal little tale should not surprise anybody even remotely acquainted with modern American academe. It’s not a secret that to serious profess a religious faith exposes an applicant for tenure at many well known universities to the latter day equivalent of “No Irish need apply.”
But consider the grim implications of this. Many of our best known schools reject serious scholars—well qualified in their fields—simply because they practice the faith that for two thousand years been the sole force of progress that has shaped and framed the tenets of western democracy.
Instead, they embrace people who cling desperately to a utopian ideology that has failed with disastrous human consequences in every society in which it has been applied.
But it is not simply that Marxism’s record is one of unremitting failure that is the only problem. The most serious indictment of Marxism is its utter moral bankruptcy—for example, the way it distorts reality and declares obvious lies to be truth.
Entrusting the education of the young and impressionable to folks so signally incapable of distinguishing between our source of liberty and the most hideous force of tyranny the world has seen borders on madness.
Parents seeking well qualified, moral, and clear sighted teachers for their children might do well to take the advice offered to Professor Johnson by the provost of Memphis State University and choose a small Christian college. But I digress …
It is not merely the academic world that is turning a blind eye to this possible—dare I say probable—explanation for the exponential growth in crime over the past half century.
The real culprits ares the politicians who are so enthusiastically driving faith out to the public square, while vociferously bemoaning the consequences. GPH✠
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