Classroom Culture Wars: Experimental Evidence of the Influence of Religion on Educational Content Regulation and Punishment
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Religion, Education, and the Culture Wars
3. Religion, Identity, and Punitive Predispositions
4. Data and Methods
5. Results
6. Discussion and Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
Abbreviations
LGBTQ+ | Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (or Questioning), plus other self-identifications for sexuality or gender |
MTurk | Amazon Mechanical Turk |
Appendix A
The Franklin Gazette |
15 November 2023 |
Charles Miller, a Professor of Economics at Middle Creek State University, has come under fire for controversial comments made in class and in professional meetings. |
A video caught on cell phone by an anonymous student shows Miller stating: “These [Biden snowflake, participation trophy/Trump snowflake, basement dweller/lazy] college students today just don’t know how to put in any real intellectual effort. I ought to fail every one of them, but I don’t only because then the bigwigs from the university will be breathing down my neck.” |
In another statement, Miller reportedly said, “I hate teaching real economics to all these idiotic [liberal/conservative] students. There’s no thought put into it. They are going to seriously destroy our country. Come talk to me when you have real problems to solve and you’re not just repeating some low-intelligence conspiracy your roommate told you.” |
More students at MCSU are sharing comments made in class by Miller about [liberal/conservative] students [and Democrats/Republicans] on social media. |
Paul Langston, the president of the mid-sized university, said that Miller’s comments do not reflect the values of the institution, especially as it tries to support students and promote critical dialogue in its programs. |
Due to the rising number of complaints, Miller is on a temporary leave of absence as the university’s personnel committee reviews his statements. |
Note: In the vignette treatment above, the bracketed text is randomly assigned to the respondent. The “Democrat critique” treatment group includes the phrases “Biden snowflake, participation trophy,” “liberal,” “liberal,” and “and Democrats.” The “Republican critique” treatment group includes the phrases “Trump snowflake, basement dweller,” “conservative,” “conservative,” and “and Republicans.” The control group includes the phrase “lazy” and omits the emboldened and bracketed words. |
1 | Also see, for example, U.S. Supreme Court (1987), where the Supreme Court ruled that a Louisiana creationism law was intended to advance religion in violation of the Establishment Clause, or U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania (2005), which found that “creation science” was inherently religion and not science. |
2 | In popular media, one could examine religious groups’ rhetoric in comparing William F. Buckley’s (1951) God and Man at Yale and the 2014 film God’s Not Dead, both of which center on professors attempting to challenge students’ religious beliefs and favoring moral relativism. |
3 | |
4 | Scholars have identified different names for and subgroups of conservative Christians. Referenced here are fundamentalists, Evangelicals, and Christian nationalists. Fundamentalists tend to be more militant in their opposition to the forces of modernity than other Evangelical Protestants. Most fundamentalists would be considered Evangelical Protestants, but not all Evangelical Protestants are fundamentalists. Similarly, Christian nationalists are a modern movement that emphasizes Christian dominance in matters of governance. Christian nationalists come from many different religious traditions, among whom there are several prominent Evangelical Protestants and Catholics. However, not all Christian nationalists are Evangelical Protestants or Catholics. These groups are nonetheless salient for discussing the history of conservative Christianity as they are among the more prominent and vocal adherents to and proponents of conservative Christianity (e.g., Wilcox and Robinson 2011; Whitehead and Perry 2020). |
5 | For example, the sample is predominantly white (97.8%), and thus we are limited to making inferences about white Americans. It over-represents women (69.2%), those with a bachelor’s degree (83.8%), and Democrats (71.5%), as well as Catholics (78.9%). Other demographic variables are more representative. The average age of our sample is 35 and the modal household income is $50,000–$75,000. While the results should not be viewed as representative of the U.S. population, research suggests that a convenience sample like this one is considerably similar to effects produced by national population surveys (e.g., Mullinix et al. 2015) and that causal inference can still be made even when using non-representative samples (e.g., Mutz and Kim 2020). |
6 | Results for a fifth dependent variable, the professor being told by the university to attend sensitivity training, are not significant and not displayed here. This may reflect attitudes about sensitivity training as a whole among conservative groups, who may view the training as ineffective (e.g., Thurman 2021) or promoting a “woke” agenda in conflict with their values and beliefs (Madigan 2023). |
7 | For example, in one of his first public comments after being elected the leader of the global Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV proclaimed the virtues of free speech and his hopes that societies would protect the “precious gift of free speech and the press” (Winfield 2025). |
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Discipline | Lose Job | Apology | Punish (vs. Defend) | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Church Attendance | 0.08 * (0.04) | 0.09 * (0.04) | 0.10 ** (0.04) | 0.16 ** (0.06) |
Catholic | −0.64 ** (0.25) | 0.51 ** (0.24) | 0.22 (0.24) | 0.85 ** (0.34) |
Mainline Protestant | −1.71 (1.13) | −0.57 (1.13) | −1.61 (1.22) | 1.70 (1.49) |
Non-religious | −0.71 * (0.37) | 0.02 (0.35) | 0.38 (0.36) | −1.02 (0.69) |
Atheist | −0.16 (0.41) | 0.07 (0.42) | −0.13 (0.41) | 0.32 (0.57) |
Republican | 0.40 ** (0.15) | 0.48 ** (0.15) | 0.53 ** (0.15) | 0.30 * (0.18) |
Independent | −0.20 (0.23) | 0.01 (0.22) | 0.45 ** (0.22) | −0.77 ** (0.35) |
Man | −0.05 (0.12) | 0.04 (0.13) | 0.03 (0.12) | 0.29 * (0.16) |
White | −0.70 * (0.37) | 0.52 (0.37) | −0.76 ** (0.38) | 1.16 * (0.64) |
Age | −0.02 ** (0.01) | −0.01 ** (0.01) | −0.01 (0.01) | 0.01 (0.01) |
Income | 0.14 ** (0.07) | 0.10 (0.06) | 0.15 ** (0.07) | 0.18 ** (0.09) |
Bachelor’s Degree | −0.66 ** (0.17) | −0.40 ** (0.17) | −0.30 * (0.16) | 0.61 ** (0.23) |
Pseudo R2 | 0.03 | 0.02 | 0.02 | 0.05 |
N | 1099 | 1105 | 1098 | 1081 |
Discipline | Lose Job | Apology | Punish (vs. Defend) | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Attend— control | −0.03 (0.07) | 0.05 (0.07) | 0.17 ** (0.07) | 0.17 * (0.10) |
Attend— Republican critique | 0.29 ** (0.07) | 0.08 (0.07) | 0.08 (0.07) | 0.23 ** (0.09) |
Attend— Democrat critique | 0.02 (0.07) | 0.09 (0.07) | 0.14 ** (0.07) | 0.12 (0.09) |
Evangelical | Catholic | Non-Religious | |
---|---|---|---|
Discipline—control | 3.11 (0.19) | 2.70 (0.05) | 2.88 (0.18) |
Discipline—Republican critique | 3.09 (0.22) | 2.75 (0.05) | 2.86 (0.16) |
Discipline—Democrat critique | 2.89 (0.20) | 2.75 (0.05) | 2.77 (0.18) |
Lose job—control | 2.41 (0.19) | 2.64 (0.05) | 2.44 (0.21) |
Lose job—Republican critique | 2.54 (0.29) | 2.73 (0.05) | 2.55 (0.20) |
Lose job—Democrat critique | 2.22 (0.18) | 2.71 (0.05) | 2.23 (0.18) |
Apology—control | 2.82 (0.18) | 2.63 (0.06) | 2.72 (0.19) |
Apology—Republican critique | 2.43 (0.26) | 2.66 (0.05) | 3.07 (0.16) |
Apology—Democrat critique | 2.30 (0.24) | 2.69 (0.05) | 2.27 (0.18) |
Punish—control | 0.07 (0.05) | 0.28 (0.03) | 0.04 (0.04) |
Punish—Republican critique | 0.19 (0.09) | 0.34 (0.03) | 0.14 (0.06) |
Punish—Democrat critique | 0.22 (0.08) | 0.30 (0.03) | 0.20 (0.09) |
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Arrenius, B.; Shook, C.; Audette, A.P. Classroom Culture Wars: Experimental Evidence of the Influence of Religion on Educational Content Regulation and Punishment. Religions 2025, 16, 1016. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16081016
Arrenius B, Shook C, Audette AP. Classroom Culture Wars: Experimental Evidence of the Influence of Religion on Educational Content Regulation and Punishment. Religions. 2025; 16(8):1016. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16081016
Chicago/Turabian StyleArrenius, Brady, Cameron Shook, and Andre P. Audette. 2025. "Classroom Culture Wars: Experimental Evidence of the Influence of Religion on Educational Content Regulation and Punishment" Religions 16, no. 8: 1016. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16081016
APA StyleArrenius, B., Shook, C., & Audette, A. P. (2025). Classroom Culture Wars: Experimental Evidence of the Influence of Religion on Educational Content Regulation and Punishment. Religions, 16(8), 1016. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16081016