Work Values and Christian Religiosity: An Ambiguous Multidimensional Relationship

Abstract

Based on data from World Values Survey, this paper argues that people who accord a central place to religion and God are consistently more likely to give work a highly important place in their personal life. This regularity spreads almost equally over Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox believers, thus indicating that an affirmative attitude to work is deeply intrinsic in the general Christian tradition. By contrast, belief in afterlife shows a spectacular negative correlation with work values that pervades all confessions, the majority of Christian countries worldwide, and almost all segments of the population. This conforms with the notion that afterlife beliefs motivate people to shift personal investments (in terms of subjective attention to time, money, personal energy, etc.) from this-worldly to other-worldly concerns.