Maybe There Really Are Fewer Atheists in Foxholes

New research suggests that war can have an effect on our religiosity

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

Did you know that suicide rates dropped after the attacks of 9/11 in the United States and 7/7 in the United Kingdom — and also during the London Blitz, when British residents were being bombarded by the Nazi air forces?

This 2009 article from The Telegraph explains why:

British scientists analysed the suicide rate in England and Wales after the September 11th attacks in America and again after the July 7th bombings in London.

After both attacks the number of suicides dropped by 40 per cent.

Dr Emad Salib, consultant psychiatrist and senior lecturer at Liverpool University, said any tragedy on a national scale such as a natural disaster, war or bombing brings society together in a common cause and this leads to the drop in suicides.

"There is greater social cohesion, the Blitz spirit," he said.

War and terrorism are awful things. Nobody would say they want to live through the Blitz or 9/11 again. But it’s fascinating that these traumatic experiences can also change the way we think about our society and our role in it and can also bring us together. Remember that right after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush’s approval rating soared to 90 percent. People didn’t have time for partisan politics. They wanted to come together.

A new study suggests there may be a similar impact of war on religiosity — that there really may be fewer atheists in foxholes.

University of Mannheim economist Wladislaw Mill worked with a team to study the effect of war on religiosity by using the Vietnam War draft lottery. That lottery pulled Americans at random to serve in the wars in Indochina, which presented a massive natural experiment (as opposed to instances where people joined the military by choice, which is a much thornier thing to study).

His team used the gravestones of veterans to locate both their birth dates and their level of religiosity — gravestones with crosses indicate that these servicemen were more religious.

“What we find is that people who were drafted to the Vietnam War are more likely to have a cross on their gravestone than people who were not drafted….and that was purely random, right?” he told me. “So people by the lottery were either drafted or not.”

They found that the effect was almost instantaneous, finding it two years after the lottery began.

“People who died last year are still more likely to have a cross on their gravestone if they were drafted versus people who were not drafted. So, this basically is an instant, long-lasting effect,” he concluded. “And we also find that this effect is there all over the U.S. So no matter where you look, you always find this effect, and you also find that this effect is true for white and black people.”

If the Vietnam War did make the soldiers who served more religious, why might this be?

Mill suggested that religion serves as a way to cope with the horrors of war.

“You see death of your comrades…you see all kinds of death, you see all kinds of drama. And you kind of need to fear for your own life,” he told me.

Religion can play a role in easing these horrors.

“It gives you a community. People might be helping you, and it also gives you a sense of meaning,” he said.