Religiosity and Fear of Crime Victimization

ABSTRACT

In this study, we developed three hypotheses about the role of religiosity in fear of crime victimization. Noting that religiosity and fear of victimization vary significantly by gender, we also examined to what extent religiosity affects fear of victimization by gender. We utilized Wave 2 of the Chapman University fear study. We developed three measures of religiosity: salience, service attendance, and biblical literalism. We used factor analysis to develop four indices of crime victimization: general violent crime; known offender; stranger; and property. We provide correlation and full-model OLS regression results. Biblical literalism is positively correlated with all measures of property crime. Moreover, when separated by gender, we find that the correlations are consistent for females only. In the full models with statistical controls, we find that literalism still has a positive effect on fear of crime victimization measures. However, tests for gender by religiosity interactions were not present in the full models. We further explored interactions between religiosity and neighborhood context and found that biblical literalism increases fear in neighborhoods with above-average crime presence but for female respondents only. Implications for theory and research are discussed.

Acknowledgments

This paper is a joint effort among the faculty and graduate students in the lead author’s seminar on religiosity and fear of crime at Baylor University. We thank Joseph Baker and Phillip Schwadel for comments on our findings.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ In that same year the violent crime rate was 387/100,000, or less than 1 percent were the victim of a violent crime (https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/cius-2016).

² One example is the Phoenix Thrill Shooters Samuel Dieteman and Dale Hausner. In 2005 and 2006, the duo traveled across the general Phoenix area randomly shooting people and animals from their car, killing eight people, wounding 19 more, and killing at least 10 animals. They were arrested in August 2006 (Kiefer 2013).

³ Some studies (Dolliver et al. 2018) have found a stronger relationship than others (Hollis et al. 2017).

⁴ The media has promoted two types of homicides: those with White victims (White et al. 2021) and Black offenders (Hurley et al. 2015; Oliver 2003). Fox News ran a near weekly count of the number of homicides in Chicago, primarily in south and west Chicago (e.g., Pagones 2021). They did not provide the same service for other cities.

⁵ Males are more likely to express fear of crime for others (e.g., wife, girlfriend, children, elderly parents) but not themselves (Rader and Haynes 2011).

⁶ https://www.gfk.com/home.

⁷ Unfortunately, the CSAF Wave 2 does not include measures of non-congregational religious behavior, such as how often the respondent prays or reads religious texts. We assumed that religious salience was a good proxy measure (i.e., those who pray or read religious texts more often are quite religious).

⁸ See (Mencken et al. 2021) for other data set explanations.

⁹ Unfortunately, the CSAF Wave 2 does not include items that allow for the development of a measure of perceived physical disorder (e.g., graffiti). However, the survey does allow for a measure of perceived criminal behavior in the neighborhood.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

F. Carson Mencken

F. Carson Mencken is a professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at Baylor University.

Kyra N. Neill

Kyra N. Neill is a sociology PhD student at Baylor University.

Jesse L. DeDeyne

Jesse L. DeDeyne is pastor at Emanuel and Saint John Lutheran Churches in Fairfax, Minnesota.

Daniel M. Allen

Daniel M. Allen is an assistant professor at Olivet Nazarene University.

Amanda C. McGowan

Amanda C. McGowan is a sociology PhD student at Baylor University.